


Bright Still

by sadlikeknives



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:29:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 23,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9326840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: Somehow, the whole thing comes back to Galen Erso even when you're dealing with magic instead of science.





	1. Cassian, Then

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this prompt](http://rogueonekink.dreamwidth.org/1084.html?thread=353852#cmt353852) from the kink meme.
> 
> Many thanks are owed to wheniwasyourage, without whom at least half of this would not exist.

Three years before, Cassian had been sitting in one of the coveted back corners of the Fallen Temple, watching the crowd and not drinking a beer, when a girl who looked too young to be in a bar—not that that meant much in a place like the Temple—walked in, looked around the room frantically, and then went straight to the bar to speak to Baze Malbus. Baze, after hearing her question and looking down the bar to Chirrut, who nodded once, shallowly, had pointed—straight at Cassian.

No one was quite sure what Baze Malbus was. Old, some would say. Big, others would counter, like that wasn't obvious to the eye. Yet others commented on the heat that rolled off his skin even when he was handing you an ice cold beer. A few things were certain: he'd been running the bar for as long as Cassian could remember, and Cassian had a long memory, and he was not to be fucked with...and so, by extension, neither was Chirrut Imwe, even if he was blind and human and had a propensity for letting his psychic gifts get him into trouble.

The girl beelined over to Cassian, who sized her up as she came. Brown hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun, green eyes, full lips. She smelled of herbs. Witch, probably. "Are you Cassian Andor?" she asked, and when he nodded, she continued, "So you're a vampire?"

His species was not usually the first point of interest people who were looking for him hit upon, but she was...definitely not the usual type who came to the Temple looking for Cassian. For one thing, she was far too obvious. "Yes," he said, because he saw no point in denying it.

"Great. I need your blood."

" _What_?"

"I'll owe you a favor for it," she said without a moment's hesitation. "And so will Galen Erso, if you can find him."

Galen Erso was a genius, everyone said. One of the most magically talented men in generations. He also hadn't been heard from in years. "What do you know of Galen Erso?" he'd asked.

"He's my father." Cassian blinked. Well. That...was something. "I'm Jyn Erso. I need your blood," she repeated.

"You should go with her, Cassian," Chirrut said, and Cassian startled. How a blind man snuck up on a vampire was a mystery, and yet Chirrut always seemed to manage it. "You might _save_ a life tonight." 

The stress was very subtle, but it was there, and Cassian thought, _Damn you,_ but he rose and said, "All right. Lead the way."

"That's it?" Jyn asked, clearly street-savvy enough to look for the catch.

"It's not a good idea to argue with Chirrut. He'll poke me with his staff until I do what he says anyway. So let's go. I'm not bleeding in here, and since I assume you need it for a spell, it'll probably be better the fresher it is anyway, right? Let's go."

***

Jyn Erso lived then, and still does, in a tiny basement apartment just a few blocks from Baze's bar. It wasn't surprising; most of the supernatural community tended to cluster together. What was surprising was that Cassian had had no idea she was anywhere around until that night. She'd opened the door and let him in, then reset her wards and gone straight through the kitchen to the living room to check on the man lying face down on the couch, his mid to lower back covered in gauze holding poultices to his wounds. Cassian could smell the char from the kitchen, but under it he couldn't smell the iron-tang of blood or the cooked meat of burns. Instead, all he got from the man was light. Not heat, not the banked fires of Baze Malbus, just...light.

Until then, he wouldn't have said light had a smell.

"Bodhi, Bodhi, this is Cassian, he's going to help, okay?" Jyn asked the man, who didn't reply, just opened his eyes and looked over at Cassian. He had stunning eyes, luminous, endlessly kind, and endlessly pained. Something inside Cassian's chest ached looking into those eyes, and he was almost glad when Bodhi closed them again. Jyn peeled back one of the poultices and muttered, "This is better."

"What's making it glow?" Cassian asked, because—well. It had been hard to miss when she'd moved the poultice. The wounds were definitely glowing.

"That's him," Jyn said, and went back into the kitchen, where she handed Cassian a Pyrex measuring cup and asked, "Do you need a knife?"

Cassian flashed his fangs at her, and she rolled her eyes and opened a cabinet, hefted a chipped dutch oven out and set it on the stove. "How much do you need?"

"At least a quarter cup; more if you can manage it. I know vampires don't bleed easy."

Cassian hadn't fed in more than a week; his blood was thick and slow, and a quarter cup was going to be hard to come by. He'd manage it, though. He sat down at the tiny kitchen table and watched her work as his almost-black blood dripped from his wrist into the cup. She was quick, methodical, occasionally consulting a sheaf of papers full of crabbed handwriting she apparently had no trouble reading and going to get sage from the herbs on the windowsill, or something dried from a box. When Cassian had her quarter cup of blood he let the wound on his wrist close and just watched her work. "What kind of spell uses vampire blood, anyway?"

"It's a healing potion."

Cassian blinked. Even in a potion, drinking vampire blood was not a good idea for any human who didn't want to become a vampire. He was pretty sure. Then again, humans didn't have wounds that glowed. "What is he? Not human."

"No," Jyn Erso agreed, and didn't answer the question. Cassian would really like to get a look at the papers she was working from, but he had a feeling he wasn't going to. She picked what looked to be a moonstone out of a crafter's box of tiny compartments with a pair of tweezers and dropped it into the pot, then snapped her fingers at Cassian in an annoyingly imperious way as she switched from the wooden spoon she'd been stirring with to a glass rod and began to count. 

He told himself not to be irritated; it wasn't like she had a third hand. He was still kind of irritated, but he did bring her the measuring cup of blood, and on, "Thirty," she started pouring it into the mixture, which went from a sickly green to the bright red of fresh blood, and then suddenly turned clear as water. The moonstone, Cassian noted, was nowhere to be seen.

Jyn poured the potion into a chipped mug and took it in to Bodhi, who, at her direction, drank it all in one go, then made a face. "I know," she said sympathetically. "I don't think I've ever made a potion that actually tasted good."

She was peeling the poultices off his back, in the middle of saying something about how the wounds were healing already, when she yelped and ducked as Bodhi—Bodhi suddenly had _wings_. Great and glowing, each individual glossy black feather the most perfect thing Cassian had ever seen in his life. "What the--" Cassian managed to choke out past his astonishment.

"I'm the messenger," Bodhi said, eerie, otherworldly, looking at a point somewhere just to the left of Cassian's head. "I brought the message." And then, with no warning whatsoever, he passed out cold.

"Great," Jyn muttered. "Great. Can you help me? I can't leave him on the couch with those out, he won't fit."

"What the--" Cassian said again, and—despite Kaytu waiting back at his place, despite everything he'd seen, he couldn't seem to make his brain wrap around it. "Is he," he tries, and then again, "Is he--" he couldn't say it. It just didn't seem possible.

Jyn grunted as she tried to maneuver Bodhi. "Help me and I'll explain." So Cassian helped her transfer a very solid, surprisingly heavy _angel_ from her couch to her bed, the wings trailing out and taking up most of the floor space in her bedroom, and then, with a quick glance back to check on him, closed the door on him before saying to Cassian, "You ever hear of Orson Krennic?"

"You shouldn't say that name," he said, and she waved it aside dismissively.

"My wards are good. And very specific. Krennic...summoned Bodhi. I don't know how. I didn't get much out of him, he was in a lot of pain. My dad got him away from Krennic somehow, and now...now he sent him to me."

"To bring a message?" Cassian guessed.

"Yeah." Jyn sighed. "He sent him to tell me Krennic has his research, and probably him."

"Oh," Cassian said.

"Yeah," Jyn agreed grimly. "Oh. I could bleed for you, if you need it."

He did, but he wasn't going to waste a favor from Galen Erso's daughter so easily. "I'm fine," he said.

He'd let himself out and thought that would be that, that maybe someday he'd call in his favor, and have nothing more to do with Jyn Erso or her angel friend.

He'd probably been more wrong about something at some point in his life, but he really couldn't remember when.


	2. Bodhi, Now

Bodhi doesn't remember much about Before. He thinks this is normal; Kaytu claims not to remember much about where he was before he was on this plane, either, but he does add that he thinks they're from very different places. He has vague impressions, mostly: he remembers being warm, and being safe, and how beautiful the light was. Flying. He remembers flying.

He doesn't remember much about after he first came to this plane, either. Cassian, when he gets drunk enough one night, says it's his mind protecting itself, but Bodhi thinks it didn't do a great job of that, if that's what's going on. He knows he's not quite right, knows he's jumpy and scared all the time and that's not normal, people aren't—most people aren't like that. He remembers the pain and the cold, and being so confused. Every question Krennic asked him was something only a monster would ever think to ask, and Bodhi hadn't understood how to even begin to answer him. His clearest memory of those days, honestly, is of the first time Krennic yanked out one of his feathers—the first time. Not the last.

And then there was Galen.

He learned what acting was from Galen, though he never really learned how to do it himself. From Galen, Bodhi learned that humans could be kind. He thinks maybe he knew that, Before, but he forgot it along with everything else, and with Krennic...with Krennic it was easy to doubt. From Galen, he learned that humans could want to help, could do everything in their power, and while their power might be magnificent, it might also not be enough. Galen, after all, had not harvested the black feathers from Bodhi's wings, the ichor from Bodhi's veins. Galen would never be the kind of person who could do that, and so Galen would never be strong enough to defeat Krennic. 

("I'll send word when I can," he'd said, "and if I can't, then he's won and I'm sorry." The curse Krennic had flung had scalded across his back, but he'd had no choice but to fly. They've never heard from Galen again, no one has, but no one's heard from Krennic, either. Jyn still holds out hope. Cassian thinks the best scenario is that they managed to kill each other, but he also shushes Kaytu whenever he tries to tell Jyn the odds.)

From Galen, and from Cassian too, a little, he learned that if you are not ruthless, you will fail. And from Galen, and from Cassian too, a little, but mostly from Krennic, he learned that only monsters are truly ruthless, that only monsters have no lines they will not cross. Galen thought himself a monster, toward the end, and Cassian has thought himself one for a long time, but they're not, not really. This, Bodhi knows with absolute certainty.

He thinks he was a little in love with Galen Erso, but then, he thinks he's predisposed to fall at least a little in love with anyone who treats him kindly. Certainly he's in love with Jyn and Cassian, although Cassian would tell you there's no kindness left in him (Cassian is often wrong about himself. It is, Bodhi thinks, part of his charm). And he loves Baze and Chirrut, although that's different.

Baze had given him a job, back when he was new, just after Galen sent him to Jyn. In return for a few shifts a week at the bar, spent mostly washing glasses and moving boxes, Baze gave him a bit of money, access to the land the local werewolf pack used on the full moon so he could stretch his wings out and _fly_ (Bodhi didn't know how Baze had arranged it, or what the pack thought he was doing up there, since they certainly didn't know about his wings), and himself to hide behind. Not literally, although Bodhi was sure Baze would let him do that, too, if it became necessary, just—Baze had a big presence, and the Temple had been his for a long time. It was hard to notice Bodhi behind that.

He's working his shift on a Thursday night, restocking the cooler and watching Jyn and Cassian argue about something at the table that might as well have Cassian's name on it, over in the back corner, wondering if they're going to have a new case to pursue, when something...changes.

"Bodhi?" Chirrut asks from his place at the end of the bar. Baze says he likes to have him where he can see him, that it's when he disappears that he gets into trouble. Bodhi thinks he feels kind of the same way about Jyn, especially since Jyn is often the one dragging Chirrut, completely unprotesting and usually delighted, into trouble these days. "Is something wrong?"

Baze looks over at him, too, just a glance, but then he does a double take and sets down the bottle of bourbon he's holding. "Bodhi," he says, his voice very careful, "maybe you should go to the back--"

Bodhi realizes what's changed. "Oh," he says. "It's Galen."

And then, for the first time in three years, he passes out cold. This time, Baze Malbus catches him before he hits the ground.


	3. Jyn, Then

Jyn stayed up all night mainlining Red Bull and reading the sheaf of papers her father had sent with Bodhi. There was a quick, personal note scribbled on the back of one page, even more indecipherable than the rest, Jyn imagined, to people who didn't inherit her father's handwriting the way Jyn had. (She remembered her mother despairing over that, but she couldn't think about that then.) The gist of it was that her father loved her and missed her, and was sorry about all of this, but she had to keep Bodhi safe now that he could not. The rest of it was disturbingly long on angelic first aid and depressingly short on explanations of _what was going on_ , although there were some notes on her father's failed attempts to send Bodhi back to wherever he came from.

If Galen Erso was expecting his daughter to finish his work in that regard, he was destined to be disappointed. Even with his notes, Jyn wouldn't know where to begin.

She knew Bodhi was awake when she heard a crash.

She opened the door to find that one of his wings had swept her bedside table over, and he said quickly, "Sorry! I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it," she told him. Something that big in a space this small, it was bound to happen. She'd deal with it later. "You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"

"No, I—they're sturdy," Bodhi said. He was already folding the wings away, disappearing them to wherever they went when they weren't on his back. Jyn's head hurt a little if she tried to think about it, so she decided to stop doing that.

"Do you want—my father's notes said you don't really need to eat, but do you want...food? Or coffee or something?"

"I like--" Bodhi hunched his shoulders like he could still feel the weight of his wings. "I like coffee. Galen gave me coffee sometimes."

"Okay," Jyn said, relieved she could do at least one thing. "I'll make coffee. And then we'll see about getting you a shirt. And some shoes." Bodhi smiled at her for the first time, and Jyn felt warm all over. That smile was like being hugged by the coziest sweater ever, she thought, and then she shook herself a little, told herself to stop being ridiculous. "I'll make coffee," she repeated. "Bathroom's over there if you want to...do whatever."

Bodhi actually did go into the bathroom for a few minutes, which gave Jyn a few minutes to have the freakout she'd been holding off on since she answered the pounding on her door last night and found not her landlord like she'd expected (even though she'd paid the rent on time and in full this month, thank you very much), but a frightened shirtless guy with goddamn wings and hex burns all over his back.

She'd pushed it back again, though it kept threatening to bubble up, by the time Bodhi emerged from the bathroom. "I think I'm going to have to go back to the Temple," she told Bodhi. The worst thing you could say about Baze Malbus was that he was neutral, which meant that even if he wouldn't help, he wouldn't hurt them, either.

"A temple?" Bodhi repeated. "What kind of temple?"

This misconception was why most of the 'normal' people Jyn and other members of the supernatural community in this town interacted with on a regular basis thought they were all Buddhists, Jyn thought. " _The_ Temple. The Fallen Temple. It's a bar. The guy who runs it might help us." She didn't go there herself very often, being still well under the legal drinking age (she'd tried to order a beer once and Malbus had just stared at her until she gave up and ordered a Coke instead), but she knew it opened pretty early—Baze Malbus, whatever the hell he was, didn't seem to need much sleep—so she wouldn't have to hold out much longer against sleep herself. In the meantime, she was pretty sure she had a t-shirt one of her ex-boyfriends had left around here, but no shoes that would possibly fit Bodhi's feet, which meant she guessed she was going to WalMart alone. That was probably for the best. She couldn't imagine an angel inside that soul-sucking abyss.


	4. Cassian, Now

The moment Bodhi starts glowing like a fucking neon sign, the shadows of the wings visible if you know where to look, a werewolf gets up and heads for the door. A couple of people turn to watch him go, disapproving looks on their faces. Bodhi's staff, and you don't fuck with staff, plus running out to sell information gained inside the Temple is considered a violation of the neutrality of its walls. That doesn't stop some people—hell, it hasn't stopped _Cassian_ , on occasion—but most of them are smart enough not to be quite so fucking obvious about it.

The looks Cassian gets as he stands and slips out after him even as Bodhi collapses are more approving, not that it make him feel any better about running out on Bodhi or what he's about to have to do, even when he meets Baze's eyes for a second before he opens the door and Baze nods respectfully to him.

The werewolf is fumbling, juggling phone and car keys at the same time with one arm in a sling when Cassian catches up to him. If he'd just waited to make the call until he was away clean, Cassian thinks, he might have managed it, or at least to talk Cassian out of killing him. But now...now there is really only one option. "Andor," he says, startled, as Cassian sidled up next to him.

"Tivik," Cassian says warmly, letting the calming overtones of a vampire's glamour, the ones that told people that it was okay, that they shouldn't listen to the part of their hindbrain screaming that they were a rabbit and he was a wolf, slip into his voice. It doesn't always work on werewolves, but Tivik is twitchy enough he thinks it's worth a shot. "Where are you off to in such a hurry, hm?"

"I just," Tivik says, his eyes tracking nervously, looking for the excuse. "Gotta get to work in the morning."

"Uh-huh. Listen, Tivik..." Cassian's not a tall guy, he has to look up to meet Tivik's eyes, this close to him. The glamour's working, or Tivik, if he has any sense at all, would never let him this close. "Who were you going to call?"

"Nobody," Tivik protests.

"Tivik," Cassian says, not unkindly, cranking the glamour up so high it makes his teeth buzz. "Who were you gonna call?"

"Nobody, Andor, I swear."

"Okay," Cassian says, a little disappointed. "Okay, it's all right. No worries. _No te preocupes_." And then he strikes.

Even as he's bundling Tivik's body into the trunk of his car, his mind is running through everything he needs to do next, crafting a checklist. He needs to clear it up with the pack's alpha, if he doesn't want trouble later on, but he thinks that won't be hard. Baze has some kind of understanding with the woman. Then, if the werewolves don't take custody, he needs to get rid of the body. Either way, he's keeping his fucking phone.

But first, he needs to check on Bodhi.

Cassian is an efficient killer, but he isn't always a neat one, and Tivik fought a little. He ducks in the back entrance and slides into the staff restroom to wash his face off before he goes into the lounge where Chirrut is sitting with Bodhi's head in his lap. Bodhi is still unconscious, and Chirrut appears to be meditating. It isn't wise to interrupt that, so he leaves them be. He can leave now, confident no one will be getting to Bodhi any time soon. He turns away from the door and right into Jyn, who punches him in the chest, right over his heart. "Where did you _go_?" she hisses.

"I had to make a call," he tells her. It's true, in its way, but Jyn knows that. She was raised partially by the fae; she's an expert at lying without telling a lie, at wiggling out of any type of firm agreement. And yet on the night they met she'd been desperate enough to offer him a favor, freely given, no strings attached. Cassian still hasn't called it in. He doesn't know if he ever will. Jyn doesn't look quite like she's forgiven him, but she doesn't look like she's planning on punching him again, either, so he asks, "Do we know what happened?"

She shakes her head. "Baze said he said something about my father before he went down."

Tivik's hearing was good enough he might have picked up on it; he might not have been dashing out of the bar over the light that had surrounded Bodhi after all. Cassian doesn't care, he couldn't risk it. He had to make a call.

"Your father," Cassian echoes. Neither of them quite dares say the name. You never knew who might be listening, even here. "Do you--"

Jyn shakes her head. "I don't know any more than you do. I haven't heard from him since he sent Bodhi. And before that I hadn't heard from him since I was eight." Her shoulders are hunched, arms wrapped around herself, holding in the old pain.

"What happened?" Cassian asks for the first time. He's told himself over and over that it doesn't matter, but now...now he thinks it might. He amends it carefully when Jyn looks up at him, a sharp warning in her green eyes: "Can you talk about what happened?"

"Not here." Her wards, he remembers, are very good, and very specific. "Can you come by my place later?"

"I've got something I need to deal with. I'll stop by if I can. If not I'll come by tomorrow. Text me or something when he wakes up," he says, and when Jyn nods, he leaves, again by the staff entrance.

When he gets home, after dealing with Tivik's body, there's a note from Draven stuck in the frame of the door of his loft. Part of him wishes he'd learn to use a phone, catch up to at least the twentieth century already; the rest of him is glad he can keep dodging him. _Cassian,_ he reads, _I was looking for you but you weren't home. I'll stop by again._

Cassian gives brief thought to moving.

As soon as he's inside, he wads the note up and throws it toward the mantel, saying, "Oye, Kaytu, wake up." Most of the art objects on the mantel of the nonfunctional fireplace in Cassian's apartment are Mesoamerican, like the rest of the apartment's decorations, but the piece in the middle is more...Mesopotamian. Its eyes glow for a moment, and then Kaytu is standing in front of the fireplace, all black spidery limbs, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. Cassian tosses Tivik's phone to him and says, " _Necesito desbloquear eso, ayer si no antes_." It's a newer model than Cassian's; he hopes it's not one of those you need the thumbprint for. If it is, he's going to have to have a very awkward conversation with an alpha werewolf. He should have thought of that sooner, but it's been a weird night.

"It is impossible for me to have the lock code for you yesterday," Kaytu says in what Cassian thought of as his most longsuffering tones before they met Jyn, when Kaytu revealed a whole new, previously unsuspected level.

"Don't give me that shit, I know you understand figurative speech," Cassian tells him.

Kaytu sighs and says, "Very well." Once, when Jyn had been very drunk, she'd asked Kaytu why he spoke English even when Cassian spoke Spanish to him, when he clearly understood Spanish, and Kaytu hadn't been able to answer her. It was a pity. It was a question Cassian would like an answer to, as well.

Cassian wakes his laptop from sleep, considers his options, sends a few carefully worded e-mails to a few very carefully considered contacts. Then he picks the note from Draven up off the floor, smoothing it out and reading it again before crinkling it back up and throwing it in the trash. "You crack that phone yet?" he asks Kaytu.

"I am still considering the possible combinations," Kaytu informs him.

"Right. Well. Consider faster."

"That is not possible, Cassian."

Cassian rolls his eyes and picks up his keys. "I'm going to Jyn's. I need to check on Bodhi."

"I thought Mr. Rook was working tonight."

"Yeah, well, change of plans. I'll fill you in later." Or not. His wards, expensive though they are, aren't as good or as specific as Jyn's, even though she's offered to redo them for him several times in the past three years, and Jyn—well, Jyn won't say so, but she doesn't really like it when he brings Kaytu to her apartment. Her wards sit uneasily around him, and he always finds something new to comment disparagingly on. And it's true, Jyn probably should move. Bodhi has been sleeping on a pullout couch for three years, for God's sake. But then she'd have to pull down her wards and set them all up again somewhere new, and Cassian understands why it seems like too much effort to be considered.

She had, however, reworked the wards so he can let himself in a while back, and then she gave him a key. So he takes advantage of his privileges, not wanting to disturb Bodhi, if Bodhi is here and can be disturbed, by knocking. Jyn's sitting at the tiny dinette table, a cup of coffee cooling in front of her. The door to the bedroom is closed, which probably means she's given Bodhi the bed again. She looks up at him and she says, "I haven't seen my father since I was eight."

"I know," Cassian says, easing down into the other chair. "I just don't know what happened."

"He was working on...energy theory, I think," Jyn says. "Ley lines. Fairy rings. That sort of thing. I don't really remember, I was very small when all this was happening. Anyway, he was working with Krennic."

" _With_ Krennic," Cassian repeats, trying to wrap his head around it.

"Yeah, well," Jyn says, looking away, "he realized real quick Krennic wasn't in it for energy theory, you know? We moved when I was five. I think we were running away. And then when I was eight, Krennic found us. With his shadow monsters."

"Demons?" Cassian guesses. "Like Kaytu?"

"No, not like Kaytu. Kaytu has his own brain. These things didn't, not really. My mother tried to fight them and they killed her. I was hiding. I was supposed to be hiding," she amended. "And then my father left with him. I think so he'd walk away from me. And I thought, he's going to get away and come back for me. But he never did. And I really don't know what he's been up to, all this time."

"Bodhi," Cassian says. He doesn't actually know what he means by it, not entirely, but Jyn makes the leap of understanding he was reaching for.

"Bodhi wasn't summoned more than fourteen years ago. No way." Bodhi is not really clear on the passage of time, still, as a concept, but he does grasp clocks and calendars better than he had at the start. There's still no way he's been on this plane since before Jyn's father disappeared out of her life.

"Right. So Krennic hasn't been holding your father captive or whatever for the last fourteen, fifteen years. We know that, because of Bodhi. Because your father wasn't around when he summoned him. And Krennic trusts your father, at least some, or he never would have given him Bodhi." It makes him sick, talking about Bodhi like he was a _thing_ that could be given away, not a person. At least now he understands something he never has before: _why_ Krennic handed Bodhi over to Galen Erso. Galen Erso was doing work on energy theory, and Bodhi Rook is light made flesh.

The next piece of the puzzle falls into place in his brain. "Your father conned him into trusting him."

"My father was a terrible liar."

"Maybe he got better at it real fast when the chips were down. People sometimes do." Jyn doesn't look convinced, or happy. It had probably been easier for her to believe her father _couldn't_ come back for her, rather than that it had been technically possible but he'd thought that Jyn was safer without him.

Cassian makes the call to change the subject. "Got another love note from Draven." Jyn pulls a face. "I should probably check in sometime," he concedes.

"Or not."

"I can't keep dodging him forever," Cassian protests, but his heart's not in it. He finds that more and more he would really, really like to keep dodging Draven forever. 

"Why don't you just kill him?"

Cassian shakes his head at her. "Because then I would inherit his job. Anyway. I should get home. You need your sleep, and I left Kaytu with a project."

"Us project or side project?"

"Side project," he says, which is at least halfway to true. It's about her and Bodhi, but it's not for them. This is for Cassian to deal with on his own, to make sure it never touches them. "I'll see you later." She walks him all of the four feet to the door.


	5. Chirrut, Then

Technically, the bar wasn't supposed to open for another twenty minutes, but Chirrut had felt moved to unlock the door early, and he smiled when he heard it open, and a girl's voice calling out, "Hello?"

He turned to greet their visitors and...oh. _Oh._

Chirrut was blind from birth. He didn't even see magic, usually, and seeing magic was, allegedly, not quite the same sense as ordinary seeing at all. He simply sensed it with all his other senses. All he could see was very strong light, and that held true metaphysically, as well. He could see Baze's power, when he let it out, and when he was being his other self, which was vanishingly rarely.

The boy with Galen Erso's daughter was like looking into a supernova.

Chirrut recovered himself quickly; turned and called, "Baze! We have guests," and Baze came out of the storeroom muttering about how it wasn't even opening time yet. Chirrut realized he should have said something to him, possibly before Jyn Erso and her friend arrived, a second before Baze stopped dead in the entrance to the back rooms and dropped his coffee cup, shattering it on the concrete floor.

The boy jumped like it had been a gunshot, and the girl started murmuring soothing somethings to him. Baze said, stunned, "Fuck me," and, a moment later, "Chirrut. Lock the door." Baze turned and went back to lock the service door; once both of them were locked, by one of their hands, the wards would go up.

Chirrut felt them go up, and heard Jyn Erso's exclamation of surprise, as he made his way back through the maze of tables to the bar. He didn't even need his staff to check his way, after so long in this space. The layout never changed, and before opening, there weren't even misplaced chairs to trip over. "You're in a black box," he explained. "Nothing in, nothing out." He sensed the girl's fear, and the right words came to him: "It's all right. Baze may not decide to help you, but he certainly won't hurt."

"How did you--"

He tapped his temple. "Psychic."

Then Baze was back, but he didn't say anything. In fact, no one did, for long enough that Chirrut got impatient and poked where he was pretty sure Jyn Erso's leg was with his staff. It hit something soft, and he could feel the force of her glare, so he'd been correct. "You, girl. What are they doing?"

"They're just staring at each other," she said, and Chirrut snorted in amusement.

It was enough to break the impasse. After another moment, Baze said, "Where did you get _him_?"

"My father sent him to me."

Baze hummed thoughtfully, deep in his chest, almost a rumble. "Galen Erso," he murmured.

"He didn't do it," the boy said, all nerves and fear, but still fierce in his defense of Galen Erso. "He didn't—Galen wouldn't do that."

"Krennic, then." The boy didn't say anything. Chirrut suspected he nodded. People so quickly forgot there was a very curious blind man in their midst. After another moment, Baze said, "You've got to get that under control."

"What?" Jyn Erso asked.

"His aura," Chirrut told her. "Can't you see it? _I_ can see it, and I'm blind."

Baze grunted agreement. "It's just what you are, but...forget Orson Krennic, every two-bit sorcerer with a thirst for power on the continent will be after him eventually, glowing like that. There's a spell," he continued, apparently addressing Jyn Erso now. "I can't do it myself, I don't have that type of power, but I can tell you how to do it. You can cast it on something he can wear, and it'll cover it. But it'll be better if he learns to do it on his own in the long run."

"I have a kyber crystal necklace my mother gave me, would that--"

"No, think, girl, kyber is an amplifier." Baze let out a breath, heavy. "I have a jade amulet somewhere that would work. I'll find it. In the meantime _keep him under your wards_." Then Baze gentled his tone to ask, "What's your name?"

"Bodhi," said the boy. _Enlightenment_. How apt.

"You'll need a second name if you're going to pass for belonging in this world."

There was a long moment of silence, and then the boy said, "Rook."

"Rook?" Jyn Erso asked him.

"Rooks have black wings," he said, steady, like this simple fact was a piece of solid ground somehow.

"Bodhi Rook," Baze repeated. "It's not bad."

"If you can't do magic yourself," Jyn Erso began, and Baze cut her off.

"I never said that."

"--then who set your wards?"

"White Knight named Yoda."

"A White Knight," Jyn Erso gasped. "I thought they were a myth."

"You don't see them around, anymore," Baze agreed. "I never did have any patience with knights...but he did good work, I'll give him that. Now go. Take him home. I've got my mess to clean up before I can deal with yours."

Chirrut rose and went to unlock the door for them, since the wards wouldn't let them leave until he or Baze unlocked a door. He flipped the sign to show they were officially open as they went. Upon his return to the bar, he told Baze, "A broken coffee cup is a lot easier to deal with than light made flesh."

"Tell me about it," Baze muttered. "Why do you think I'm doing this part first?" Chirrut chuckled, and Baze asked him, "I don't suppose you know where that amulet is, do you?"

"I don't know where half your treasures are," Chirrut pointed out. He could _feel_ Baze looking sharply at him, because it hadn't been a yes or a no. "No," he admitted grudgingly. He didn't like not knowing things. "I'll think on it."

"It would be a help."

"What is he?" he asked. "Bodhi Rook."

"Chirrut," Baze told him gently. "You know what he is."

"No, I really--" and then he realized that he did. "Oh," he said. " _Oh._ Oh, no." Baze set a shot glass down in front of him heavily, and Chirrut picked it up and tossed back its contents without a moment's hesitation. The burn of good tequila going down helped a little. "What--"

"Krennic," Baze said grimly. Even with just the usual wards in place, Baze could get away with saying names like that. "That poor creature."

"Is a jade amulet going to be _enough_?"

"No," Baze admitted, "but it'll be a start. He'll learn it on his own, given time. I'll have to keep the boy close for a while."

"Yes," Chirrut said. "I think you will."

This, he thought, was going to be _interesting_.


	6. Jyn, Now

Jyn's milk soured overnight again. She has too many orders for the herbal teas and mixtures she sells on Etsy for the majority of her income (most of them even work, or would work if she wasn't selling them to mundanes) to fill to run to the store, and after the night before she's sure not letting Bodhi go anywhere alone, so when Cassian lets himself in a little after sunset she's munching on a bowl of Froot Loops in coffee and calling it dinner. He stares at the bowl for a long moment, and she tells him, "I don't want to hear it." He especially doesn't have room to talk since he's carrying his travel mug from Starbucks, which, it's always toss-up odds whether that thing contains blood, coffee, or some sort of unholy blood and coffee combination. The digestive system of a vampire is mysterious and delicate, and apparently sometimes mixing is the only way he can trick his stomach into accepting liquids that aren't blood without vomiting them back up. That damn mug is the reason Bodhi can count 'B positive' on the list of foods he's tried.

He hadn't cared for it.

"You're gonna get scurvy," Cassian tells her.

"I am not going to get scurvy," she scoffs. "Scurvy isn't even a real thing."

"Yes, it is," he insists. "Your gums bleed, it's very unpleasant."

Jyn rolls her eyes. It's impossible to keep food in her kitchen. She does so much magic in there it seeps everywhere, especially in the fridge where she stores potions. Anything heavily processed does better than anything fresh, and honestly, she mostly lives on takeout. She tamps down a snarky comment about how she'd think he'd like it if her gums bled and goes with, "I'm not going to get scurvy."

"Bodhi, tell her she's going to get scurvy," Cassian says, and Bodhi looks up, startled, from his fascinated perusal of the Sur La Table catalog that had somehow gotten mixed in with her mail—it must feel like he's peering into an alternate universe, Jyn thinks wryly.

"I—I don't know what that is?" Bodhi says.

"See? Not a real thing."

"He doesn't know what a lot of things are, that doesn't make them fake," Cassian argues patiently.

"What's an immersion blender?" Bodhi asks, and Cassian gestures to him as if to say, 'See?'

Jyn ignores them both. "I'm not gonna get scurvy. I take a multivitamin every day." Well. "Almost every day. When I remember to."

"Do you ever eat a vegetable?" Cassian asks.

"I had pizza the other day, does that count?"

"Bodhi has a better diet than you, and he eats like once every four days, if he feels like it." Jyn can't really argue with it.

Bodhi looks even more startled now. "Why—why are we arguing about me?"

"We're not arguing about you," Cassian assures him. "We're arguing about vegetables." Jyn glares at him, _Look what you did_. Her heart aches a little, the way it sometimes does when she thinks about what Bodhi might have been like, the person he would have been if his first introduction to their world hadn't been Orson Krennic dragging him facedown through hell. But Cassian glares back at Jyn, refusing to admit fault, for a moment before he goes over to sit with Bodhi on the couch. "So, what happened last night?"

Bodhi shakes his head. "I don't know. I—Jyn said I was glowing, but I didn't realize, and I usually do, now." He clutches at the amulet he's wearing, the one Jyn had made him to help control his aura, which was apparently really something—Jyn has only ever been able to see the edges of it out of the corner of her eye, even when it's out of control, except for last night when the entire damn bar saw him shine—back at the beginning, before he'd learned how to tamp it down on his own. He put it on first thing when he woke up. Jyn thinks it's probably a good idea. "I just knew that Galen was back."

Cassian's head jerks up, meeting Jyn's eyes. "Did you--" he starts, even though her surprise has to be all over her face.

"No, I didn't want to grill him twice. Bodhi, what do you mean, Dad's back?"

Bodhi shakes his head, looking apologetic. "I don't...I just knew he was back."

"Back where? Back _from_ where?"

"Look, I'm telling you, that's all I got!"

Jyn can feel her desperation for more information clawing at her throat, but she backs off. If that's what he knows, she tells herself sternly, that's what he knows, and they sure won't get more out of him by freaking him out. Cassian takes a deep breath. He doesn't need to, of course, but she knows it helps him focus sometimes.

No one has heard anything from Galen Erso since the night he sent Bodhi to Jyn with the message that Orson Krennic was coming for him. No one has heard anything from Orson Krennic in the same time frame. Jyn tries not to think about it too hard, but she honestly assumed they were both dead. She knows Cassian assumed the same.

"Maybe he dragged Krennic somewhere," Cassian says. "Some other plane. Or...they were stuck like in a fairy ring, I don't know."

"Maybe," Jyn agrees. It meshes. "But if he's back..."

"Then Krennic could be, too."

"I'm not going back," Bodhi says. "I'm not going back, I can't, I can't."

Cassian puts one arm around Bodhi's shoulders. "You're not going back," he agrees, his eyes on Jyn's. "We're not gonna let that happen."

"We won't let him have you," Jyn promises, and she means it, down to her bones. She tells Cassian, "We have to find my dad."

Cassian nods. "Before Krennic does." Then he turns to Bodhi. "Hey, I'll take you out for dinner, how about that? How about a curry?" Bodhi loves curry, so hot Jyn feels like she's breathing smoke when she tries to steal a bite, but tonight he just shakes his head.

"I don't think I could eat."

"Well, so much for my idea for getting vegetables in your roommate."

Jyn rolls her eyes. "I just ate."

"That was not food."

She lets it go. "Maybe you should reconsider letting me redo your wards." Having another option for where to stash Bodhi is never a bad idea. She thinks Baze would let them hide him with him, but she's not sure: it would definitely put Chirrut in the possible line of fire, which Baze is never happy about, and she still doesn't know _what_ Baze is. She doesn't know if he could potentially stand up to Krennic or not, if it comes to it. "I think starting from scratch I could do better by Kaytu."

"Maybe," Cassian agrees, his mouth and eyes hard. She understands why when he says, "I have to talk to Draven."

"Fuck Draven," Jyn protests.

"Look, if Orson Krennic is back, we need to explore every avenue of information. Vampires trade in secrets."

_And drama,_ Jyn finishes silently, Cassian's favorite joke at his own expense. "I'll go with you."

"No, Jyn. He hates you."

The feeling was mutual. "That's why I should go with you."

"It's really not."

"This is a bad idea."

"I couldn't avoid him forever."

"Sure you could have."

"I don't like Draven either," Bodhi points out, and Cassian squeezes his shoulders.

"I know, _angelito_ , no one likes Draven."

"He always makes you do something you don't want to do," Bodhi says softly.

Cassian looks at Jyn. Jyn looks at Cassian.

Cassian gives in. "All right, you can come, but you wait in the car." When Jyn opens her mouth to protest, he says, "I don't want to leave Bodhi here alone, do you? And I'm sure not taking him into that den of vipers. So you gotta stay in the car with him."

Bodhi looks almost hopeful, and Jyn caves. "Fine. We'll stay in the car."

" _Thank you_ ," Cassian says, heartfelt. Jyn thinks he's being overdramatic, but whatever. Vampire trait. She'll let it go, this once. Recent events have been enough to warrant some drama, she thinks.


	7. Cassian, Then

There was a witch at Cassian's table.

Normally, he'd just find another table under circumstances such as these, except he recognized this witch: Jyn Erso, she of the angel requiring first aid.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, not sounding sorry at all when he was close enough to stand over her. "Is this table reserved?"

Cassian didn't reply, just pulled out the other chair and sat down. Jyn snorted indelicately, and Cassian, looking at the soda in front of her, told her, "The trick is to not act like you're getting away with something."

"What?"

"Plenty of fae and vampires and shit won't ever look twenty-one. He'll serve you even though he knows you're actually not if you just act normal."

"Yeah, I was. He still gave me a Coke."

Her sour tone was enough to almost make Cassian laugh. "Well, I'm sure you'll turn twenty-one eventually," he told her, and she glared at him, which was somehow even funnier. "Where's your friend?"

Jyn nodded toward the bar, and Cassian looked and—blinked. That was, indeed, Bodhi refilling the cooler under Baze Malbus' patient instruction. "He gave him a job," Jyn said.

"Huh." Cassian considered the scene. "That doesn't happen often." The last time, he thought, had been in the nineties, a dark-eyed, sad, heavily pregnant fairy girl who, like Bodhi, had obviously had no idea what she was doing. She hadn't stayed long; Cassian had heard rumors after the fact that she'd died in childbirth, but Baze never spoke of why she'd been there or where or why she'd gone.

Something about thinking about Baze Malbus' last employee—Cassian tried and failed to remember her name—hit on another memory, another dark-eyed, sad girl. This one had been a client. She'd hired him to search her husband's life, and then, when he could find no evidence of a sealskin hidden in any corner of it, she'd killed said husband, and then herself. Her eyes, Cassian thought, and he considered the best way to broach the subject in public for a while, watching Bodhi work, before he turned to Jyn Erso and said, "So he's a selkie, right? Your friend." She looked over at him, startled, confused, opening her mouth to speak and he looked at her, willing her, _Understand me_. She closed her mouth again, though she was still obviously unsure where he was going with this. "Only selkies have eyes like that, yeah?" he asked, nodding toward the bar.

Jyn looked over to Bodhi, and back to him, and he saw it in her eyes when she got it. There were rumors that Jyn Erso had been raised half by the fae. It made sense; he thought he'd heard her mother had been fae, although perhaps she'd been a changeling child. Jyn didn't smell demifae. Whatever the truth of it, she knew enough to know what a selkie trapped on the land looked like, those eyes that were the only thing even close to Bodhi's: dark, liquid, luminous, endlessly sad. Drowning eyes. "Yeah," she finally said. "He lost his skin." She licked her lips. "It might have been destroyed, there was—there was an incident. He's taking it better than could be expected, really."

"He's still alive," Cassian said, which was agreement, in its way. Separation, selkies could push through until they could have their skin again. Destruction...most of them chose to be wholly destroyed, rather than half. Being ripped away from half of yourself, it seemed, was at least a cousin to the kind of trauma that was being ripped out of somewhere that just might have been heaven.

"He's still alive," Jyn agreed.

It was a good story, Cassian thought. It explained why Bodhi was the way he was, why Baze would have pity enough to give him a job at his bar. And it would keep people from asking too many questions, because it would be monstrous to intrude upon that kind of grief.

After a long moment, Jyn Erso said, "Thank you," so soft Cassian could barely hear it.

"Nothing to thank me for," Cassian told her. "You still owe me a favor, after all." Then he got up and went to buy a beer—Bodhi flashed him a surprised little smile, and Cassian wondered that he both remembered and recognized him, the state he'd been in—and when he came back, Jyn Erso was still at his table. He sat back down with her, and she said, "Rook. His name is Bodhi Rook."

"Rook," Cassian agreed. For those great black wings of his, no doubt. "Bit on the nose, isn't it?"

Jyn's brows furrowed in mocking confusion. "For a selkie?"

Point taken. "Well. Maybe not."

"Are you going to drink that beer?"

"No," he admitted, "but Malbus doesn't like it when you take up space in his bar without ever buying anything." He knew where she was going with it, but he was going to make her ask.

"Trade you?"

"Sure." He wasn't going to make her ask _hard_ , though.

Baze shot him an exasperated look from the bar, but otherwise did nothing to curb the underage drinking going on at his table. It wasn't like they were going to be raided or something, Cassian thought.

After that, he couldn't come into the bar, especially on nights Bodhi was working, without Jyn Erso already being at his table. He tried sitting at a different table a few times, but she looked wounded at him, and he always wound up moving, teasing her about how she just wanted him to switch drinks with her.

And then one night a guy had come into the bar looking for Cassian, with a problem he wanted his help solving, and Jyn had been at his table. And that...that was how the whole damn thing had really gotten started.


	8. Cassian, Now

Draven's house, Cassian thinks as he parks on the street in front of it, is ridiculous.

For one thing, it's out in the sticks, which might make sense if it was an estate with some land and they were werewolves, but neither of those things is true. Instead, it's in a subdivision of McMansions on lots the size of postage stamps that popped up on what used to be farmland in the late nineties, someone's speculation that hadn't really played out: everything around is still farmland. Everything about the place is ill-suited to vampires. When Draven calls his people in, they have to fucking _carpool_ to avoid flooding the neighboring streets with cars and causing a fuss about why he's having a party. The neighbors are nosy, and too numerous to keep in thrall even if he tried. The house itself has a lot of huge windows, even in the bathrooms, and only the master has a closet big enough to lie down in, so his people can't even stay over. Even Cassian's loft is better, that way: someone's crashed in his bathroom more than once.

Also, the house is ugly, but that might just be Cassian's opinion.

"That house is hideous," Jyn mutters from the shotgun seat, and his lips quirk up. "Why does he live so far out, anyway?"

Cassian considers lying and claiming he has no idea, but he's known since Draven bought the ridiculous place. "Power play."

Jyn thinks about it for a moment before she asks, confused, "Against _who_? You and Melshi?"

"No, I wasn't—I started making my dissatisfaction known later. I can't speak for Melshi." Although if it _had_ been meant to snap him into line somehow it had failed as spectacularly as the more obvious aspect had. "Baze."

"What?"

"The supernatural community, except for some of the fae who don't do well in town, and some of the werewolves, mostly is concentrated in about six blocks around the Temple." Jyn looked at him in the orange glow of the streetlight like, 'Yeah, duh.' "Draven thought he could...pull focus."

"That's the funniest thing I've heard all week," Bodhi says from the backseat.

It kind of is. Baze had never even noticed. Why would he?

"Why would he want to?" Jyn asks. "Baze is neutral."

"He's not, though, not really. He has his biases. Chirrut is the big one." But there were others. He'd helped Jyn and Bodhi, and his last employee before Bodhi, the pregnant fairy girl, he'd obviously been hiding her from something, too. "Vampires trade in secrets," he explains. "It's why I hang out at the Temple in the first place. And it drives Draven nuts that every piece of information in this town comes through there before it gets to him."

"So he moved to the middle of nowhere."

"There were supposed to be more developments, when this place was built. A shopping center, stuff like that."

Jyn snorts, derisive. "Vampires in suburbia."

"This way he still doesn't get anything first, but he gets to summon us to drop half our night and we have to comply. It's its own kind of power trip." He flexes his hands around the steering wheel, considering. If Draven asks about what happened last night at the Temple, he'll have to tell him. But what he'll have to tell him...that depends on what Draven asks.

Bodhi spots the flaw. "But he won't learn to use the phone." He sounds disbelieving, as well he might: Bodhi hadn't been with Jyn a week before she'd taught him how to use the phone to call her if he needed to, and he'd picked up texting just as quickly.

"Nope."

"So he has to come tell you to come see him."

"Sometimes he has someone else deliver the message for him. But yes. That is, in fact, a flaw." It was a flaw he and Melshi had yelled and laughed about at length, over a few bottles of wine, when Draven had moved into the house in the first place. It was a lot funnier before a couple of decades of getting dragged out here. He thought Draven had soured on the whole business, too, but the man was too damned stubborn, that was...part of his problem. Not all of it. But definitely part.

Draven would tell you that his problem is that Melshi packed his bags and moved to Seattle (Cassian still texts him now and then to ask if he's started sparkling yet), and that Cassian's running with the wrong crowd, but Draven mistaking effect for cause is another part of his problem.

Well, he thinks, no point in putting it off any more. "Best get this over with," he mutters, and gets out of the car.

Draven meets him at the door, which sends the alarm bells clanging in his head. Usually he makes Cassian wait, or at least has a minion open the door. As soon as he's inside, Draven says, "Heard something happened at Malbus' bar."

It is not, Cassian thinks, what Draven originally summoned him about. That note was probably on his door before Bodhi went down. But it's definitely overruled any other concerns. Draven's probably not alone in that. "You mean Rook passing out?" he asks, keeping his tone carefully neutral. "Bit of drama."

"Why is he in your car?"

"I told them we'd get dinner. Erso doesn't keep real food in her house. Gotta keep her healthy." He's carefully cultivated Draven's opinion of his relationship with Jyn and Bodhi for three years now, trying to sell Draven on his mostly caring about Jyn as a ready blood donor. Draven doesn't really buy it, and in truth he's never bitten Jyn—even though she's offered, every time Cassian's gotten hurt on one of their jobs, or just when he's a little paler than usual around the edges. He's wanted to, God, how he's wanted to, but he's held back.

He's afraid he wouldn't be able to stop, that he would get lost in the dark lushness of her and only remember to come out when there was nothing left.

He doesn't let himself think about drinking from Bodhi, if such a thing is even possible. About what it would be like to swallow down liquid light instead of rich red blood. If it would taste like the sunlight he hasn't seen in centuries, if it would burn him up from the inside out. If he would be happy to burn in such a way. No. It's better not to think about it at all.

Draven makes a thoughtful noise, then says, "I thought you said he was a selkie."

"That's what I was told."

"Selkies don't glow."

"No," Cassian agrees. "I've never seen him do that before." He follows Draven into the living room, with its tall, arched windows and two story ceilings. Eastern exposure. It's always made his skin crawl in a way the wall of windows in his own living room doesn't. At least they face west, he's always told himself. He'll never enjoy the lovely sunset views but he'll never be caught out by the first rays of morning, either.

"So what is he?" Draven asks.

He could say, 'I don't know.' He worked out that he can lie to Draven outright now and he won't notice a while back. But he tries to hold that secret in reserve, so he says, "They're not saying." Draven looks unhappy. "He could still be a selkie, I guess. Could've been a spell."

"Heard he said something about Galen Erso."

"I didn't hear it, but that's my understanding." There were at least two other vampires at the Temple last night, and even if there hadn't been, word would have gotten back to Draven eventually. There's no point in trying to hide it, even if something in the back of Cassian's head is screaming to try.

"I didn't know Bodhi Rook had any connection to Galen Erso."

"I guess it would explain why he's been crashing on Jyn Erso's couch for three years. I would have assumed with a selkie it was the fae connection through Gerrera." _Careful_ , Cassian thinks. _Careful._

"You never asked?"

"Would _you_ ask a selkie outright how he lost his skin and came to be sleeping on Jyn Erso's couch?" Cassian asks. He doesn't even have to pretend to be taken aback; were Bodhi actually a selkie, it would be about the rudest thing he can think of.

Draven looks put off for a moment, but recovers. "Last I heard Galen Erso was working with Orson Krennic." Cassian kind of can't believe he said it. Draven's wards are good enough, but they're vampire wards, and unlike Jyn's, they are not that specific.

"Jyn doesn't think it was exactly willing."

"Hmph. And she saw him last when?"

"Fifteen years ago."

"Yeah. You know as well as I do not to trust a child's opinion of their parent, and that's how she thinks about him. Like a child."

"Well," Cassian hedges, ignoring the itch of anger in his teeth. "She is his child."

"You know what I mean. What do you know about Erso?"

"Not much. No one knows much, not even Jyn. She says she remembers him working on energy theory, but that's about it."

"Energy theory, that's funny. Well, maybe at the start. Orson Krennic," Draven says with relish, "was working on something apocalyptic."

"He wanted to end the world?"

"And make himself king of the ashes. When he and Erso disappeared...I'd hoped they'd managed to fuck it up and kill themselves, honestly. Now...well. Now we've got a mess on our hands, don't we?" Cassian doesn't bother to answer. He knows a rhetorical question when he hears it. "They have to be stopped," Draven says decisively. "I don't know where they've been for the last three years and I don't care. I don't like any of it and they have to be stopped. If you get the chance, I need you to kill Galen Erso."

If Cassian's heart still beat, he is fairly sure it would have just stopped. "What?"

"You heard me. That's an order, Andor," and they both know Cassian can no more break an order, a true order, from Draven than he can go sunbathing at high noon. That's the price of the immortality Draven put in his veins. Not unless he wants to kill him, right now, and there is a glint in Draven's eye that says he's waiting for Cassian to try. "Kill Galen Erso."

He can work around it, he tells himself. He can find proof Galen Erso isn't trying to end the world, proof that isn't just Jyn's bone-deep conviction and the truth about Bodhi he cannot give Draven, and bring it to him, make him see reason. He can...he can never be in a room with Galen Erso, if the man turns up after all, he can help it.

Or, hell, he just might have to kill Draven and take his job after all. But not right now. Not like this, with Draven waiting, expecting it.

"Sir," he tries, because Draven will expect him to try something. "Erso could be an asset."

"Not to us," Draven says.

He bows his head, letting the older vampire see the tension in his shoulders, in his neck. "Yes, sir."

"Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir," he says again.

"Dismissed."

He slams the door when he gets back into the car, and Jyn startles. Bodhi nearly jumps out of his skin. "How did it go?" Jyn asks.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"That well, huh?"

"I don't want to talk about it." His voice is raised, nearly yelling, and Jyn backs off, raising her hands defensively. He hates himself a little.

He should tell her. He can't tell her. How do you tell someone you care about you've been ordered to kill their father, and you can't not do it?

What he does manage to say, once they're out of the subdivision and back on the highway into the city, is, "He's very suspicious about Bodhi."

"I think half the city is probably suspicious about Bodhi now," Jyn says, trying to sound reassuring even though her words, honestly, are anything but. "Anything else?"

He should tell her.

"Just bullshit vampire business," he says. "You know, the usual." He does his best to ignore Bodhi's eyes in the rearview mirror.


	9. Jyn, Then

Jyn had been working with Cassian for about two months when she met Draven for the first time.

She'd known he worked for someone—almost all vampires did. They were like the mafia, that way. If you found a vampire who was a loner, a true loner, that was a vampire who was on the edge of going completely crazy. She'd told Cassian once that it all seemed unnecessarily complex to her, and Cassian had smirked, thin, and explained it to her as best he was able.

The first thing she needed to understand, he'd said, was that secrecy and drama were a vampire's stock in trade. That was just basic. If you didn't have a network, you didn't have any way to leverage the secrets you knew, or to find out anyone else's. So it paid to stay connected.

The second thing she needed to understand was that a vampire, at his or her core, was always thirsty. "Always," he'd said, looking into her eyes with his own burning like coals. "Left to ourselves we'd drain the whole world dry." Jyn had been very certain, even then, that Cassian wouldn't do that, but she hadn't been brave enough to say it then. Even three years on, she isn't sure she is. So, he'd continued, they had to be accountable to each other, even on a biological level. Draven is the ranking vampire in the city, and besides that, he made Cassian. Cassian literally, physically, could not disobey a direct order from him. Just thinking about it made her skin crawl.

And then one day Draven sat down at what Jyn had come to think of as their table at the Temple and looked over at Jyn, and it was mutual hate at first sight. "Andor," he said. "Who's your friend?"

"Draven," Cassian said, lowering the glass of red he'd had halfway to his lips. "To what do I owe the honor?"

Draven repeated, "Who's your friend, Andor?" and Jyn's dislike of him shot up a few more degrees, which a few seconds earlier she wouldn't have thought possible.

"Lianna Hallik," she said, just for the hell of it, and Cassian shot her a warning look.

"You know who she is, Draven."

"Galen Erso's daughter."

Jyn wondered what it was like to not be defined by who her father was. She thought it might be nice. Sometimes, she thought she would settle for people remembering she had a mother, as well. She wasn't stupid enough to say any of that, though, so she just smiled very falsely at Draven and said, "Yes."

"What do you want, Draven?" Cassian asked, and Draven just looked at her. "We're in business together," Cassian told him, and that was how it became official, right there, just because he was annoyed with his boss. Master. Vampire dad. Whatever. Hadn't stopped Jyn from holding him to it later, of course.

Draven was still looking at her like he wanted to scrape her off the bottom of his shoe, which frankly, Jyn could do without. She rose, saying saccharine sweetly, "I'll just go powder my nose while you big strong men talk about matters too weighty for my little brain, then." It hadn't occurred to him to order Cassian not to talk about it with her—and it turned out to have to do with their case at the time, too—so she'd gotten the whole thing out of him later, anyway, although her first question had been, "So, is Draven his real name?" ("As far as I know," Cassian had said. "He's never used anything else.") She still had her doubts. 'Draven' was a little too made-to-order Gothic for her to quite buy it as real.

Cassian had paid for it, though: Draven didn't like coming into town, especially to the Temple. He wanted everyone to come to him. Their involvement in the case had forced his hand, and as a result, he'd kept Cassian hopping running his errands for him for several weeks after they closed the case. Nothing could have improved Jyn's opinion of the man at that point—one of the few things she and Kaytu were in total agreement on—but the incident definitely hadn't helped Cassian's increasing discontent, and things had just gotten steadily worse from there. One of these days, Jyn thought, there was going to be a reckoning between Cassian and Draven. Sometimes, she thought Draven was pushing for it to happen, and that just made her hate him more. If he was old enough to be suicidal, there were easier ways to kill yourself, even for a vampire, than forcing your protege to hate you enough to do the honors.


	10. Bodhi, Now

Cassian's hiding something.

Cassian's always hiding something, and often it's after he's come back from a meeting with Draven. But this time...darkness and guilt always swirl around Cassian Andor, but now he carries them like chains. Bodhi doesn't like it at all.

Bodhi is trying to figure out how to ask him—maybe if he can get Jyn away, since Cassian kept shooting her little guilty looks when he was lying—when they get out of the car, down the block from Jyn's house. Cassian looks like he's about to make his excuses and get back in and drive off, though, when he hears—something. "Do you guys hear that?"

"Dogs?" Cassian asks, tilting his head, "Or...geese?" Comprehension floods his face, followed a moment later by horror. It's a look Bodhi has never seen before on Cassian Andor's face, and never wants to see again.

Jyn is already running, grabbing Bodhi's elbow and dragging him with her. "Get in!" It's a frantic scramble down the stairs and into the apartment, Jyn slamming the door behind her and turning the locks, telling Cassian, "Windows, lock them, and the curtains!" as she grabs a carving knife out of the block on the counter and starts frantically carving sigils into the door frame. He's already doing it. She turns to Bodhi and opens her mouth to say his name, he can see it forming on her lips, but then she stops and says, "Get in the bathroom."

Bodhi has never seen Cassian or Jyn this scared, never mind both of them, so he goes without a moment's argument. Cassian joins him a minute later, the gun Bodhi hadn't even realized he was carrying naked in his hand. "What's going on?" he asks, and Cassian shakes his head.

"I can't say it. Not until sunrise. Can't say your name, either, even under the wards they could hear, if that's what they're after." Cassian looks grim and frightened, and that in itself is terrifying.

Jyn comes into the bathroom then, closes the door and locks it, sets her baton down on the counter and uses the carving knife to cut more sigils into the door frame here, too. "There goes your security deposit," Cassian mutters.

"I lost that years ago."

"Are we gonna be in here all night?" Bodhi asks.

"Yeah," Jyn sighs, still intent on her work. "Might as well get comfortable."

When she finishes her carving, she takes something out of the cabinet under the sink, and Cassian hisses, "You keep holy water in your _house_?"

"It was never to use on you," Jyn hisses back, and Bodhi thinks—they're both so scared. They're both keeping their volume so low, like something could hear them even in here.

"Well, if you have to," Cassian says, somber, "don't hesitate on my account." Cassian and Jyn's eyes lock for a long moment, and then Jyn nods. He fishes his phone out of his pocket one-handed, still holding the gun, and starts texting someone.

"What are you doing?" Jyn asks.

"Texting Baze. He probably already knows, but if he doesn't he needs to. Last time he locked down the bar."

"I bet that was a fun night." 

The pull of Cassian's mouth answers for him: not really. "Can they read writing?"

"I don't think so."

Cassian nods and types out something on his phone, then shoves it at Jyn. "It might not be him," she says, defensive, and when Cassian gives her a 'come on' sort of look, "There are other—there are others."

"Around here?"

"They don't have set ranges, you know that."

"What's going on?" Bodhi asks, a little louder, maybe, than he should—there's a sound like a horse screaming, somewhere, and Cassian wordlessly thumbs off the safety on his gun. He tells himself it might just be coincidence. He doesn't really believe it.

Jyn silently bundles Bodhi into the bathtub, and he doesn't miss that they've both put themselves between him and the door. Then she picks up Cassian's phone off the counter, and she and Cassian have some kind of complicated conversation using mostly it and their eyebrows. Bodhi thinks the gist of it is, 'Is this really the time?' from Cassian, and 'We might not get another,' from Jyn. Then she hands Bodhi the phone, and he reads what she's written: _The Wild Hunt._

Bodhi doesn't know what that is, but it doesn't matter, really. It's enough to terrify Jyn and Cassian, enough for Baze to lock down the Temple overnight. That's all he really needs to know.

They wait. For hours, they wait in silence, afraid to speak. At one point, Cassian writes on his phone that he heard motorcycles, and Jyn looks even more frightened, which Bodhi hadn't really thought was possible. And then, at last, Cassian's shoulders slump, all his vitality draining away, and he murmurs, "Sunrise." He won't be much use now, he never is when he has to be awake in the day, but he's making an effort, Bodhi can see it. He lifts his weary head and he says to Jyn, "I'll ask you again. What would Saw Gerrera want with Bodhi?"

"I don't know," Jyn says. "It doesn't make any sense."

"He's half crazy or he wouldn't be at the head of a Hunt, Jyn, it doesn't have to make sense."

Jyn shakes her head. "It might just be a Hunt. It's the right time of year for one."

"In this neighborhood—"

"This is the supernatural neighborhood—"

"Right after--"

"We don't even know it was him."

"Jyn. Don't do this. Don't delude yourself out of safety. Out of _Bodhi's_ safety." He's swaying on his feet, and every minute they stand around talking is another minute for the sun to come up and peek around the curtains if they try to move him, Bodhi thinks.

"What would he even _want_ with him?" Jyn asks, and it's almost a wail.

"Maybe he thinks he knows where your father is."

"He could ask, like a normal person," she spits, and Cassian takes it, because, Bodhi thinks, he understands she's not mad at him.

"'Like a normal person' isn't really his style...Jyn, _lo siento, estoy tan cansado..._ " And that's pretty much that: if they don't get Cassian out of this bathroom soon, he's going to be occupying it until sunset. Once he loses his English, they learned a long time ago, he's pretty much _gone_.

"Okay, put the gun down," Jyn says, "You're not handling a gun right now." Then she realizes she needs to break it down more for his current ability to command the English language, and says, "Cassian. Gun. Down." Cassian obediently leaves the gun on the counter, and Jyn mutters something about needing to learn Spanish before she unlocks the door, peeks out before she opens it the rest of the way. Bodhi, after the way they've been all night, honestly half expects someone or something to jump her, but the apartment is quiet as Cassian shuffles into the bedroom and curls up on the floor of Jyn's closet. It's not big enough for him to lay down, even if he wasn't sharing half the space with shoes. Cassian really, really tries not to get caught here for the day. Bodhi gives him one of the pillows from the bed, and he stuffs it between his head and the wall and is unconscious before Jyn even closes the door.

Jyn scrubs one hand over her face. "I have to go to the grocery store," she says.

"Maybe you should wait until after you've slept?" Bodhi suggests. He doesn't need to sleep that often, himself, but he knows she's not going to let him go alone. She doesn't really trust him with the grocery shopping, anyway, not since the time he came home with a bag of dark chocolate and one doughnut, and nothing else. He didn't think it had been that much worse than most of her hauls, but he knows better than to say so.

"Yeah, maybe. I should...I don't think he put the safety back on that gun...okay, I'm gonna fix that, and then I'm gonna sleep," she decides. " _Don't_ open the door while I'm asleep. Even if it sounds like someone safe, or like someone's being murdered out there."

He blinks at her a few times. "Jyn. I'm new. I'm not stupid."

"Right. I'm sorry, Bodhi, I'm just--" Instead of saying what she just is, Jyn flings her arms around him.

"It'll be okay," he says as he hugs her back. "We'll figure it out. We'll find Galen." It feels right, he thinks, but he knows that alone won't make it true.


	11. Jyn, Before

The bitch of it was, she really did think Saw thought he was doing his best by her even when he threw her out. He was fae, after all, and farther and farther from human all the time—you didn't lead a Hunt without losing chunks of your soul—and maybe he did think that sixteen was old enough to be turned out on your own. Maybe he thought that if she stayed any longer she would start losing chunks of her soul, too. She didn't know. She just knew that she came home and the doors wouldn't open.

He gave her a gun before he turned her out, an ancient Colt revolver he had to use a handkerchief to handle. She pawned it because she didn't have any money to buy food, and found out later it was actually worth a fortune and she'd been ripped off. She hadn't even been able to be mad about it. Of course she'd been ripped off. She was _sixteen years old_.

To be fair, Saw probably hadn't known it was worth a fortune when he gave it to her, either.

Everything tasted wrong, those first few months out of fairy. In fairy, every strawberry was the most perfect strawberry. Every slice of bread was warm out of the oven, slathered with fresh butter and honey. And then in the human world...honestly, Taco Bell had felt like less of a betrayal than a January tomato from the supermarket had. Everything had tasted like chemicals. At least some things weren't lying about it.

Plus, her magic kept ruining all her food.

There had to be a way to get her kitchen in order, she knew. Her parents' magic had seeped into every corner of their home, but most of their meals had been fresh, cooked with vegetables from their garden. She remembered her father stirring a potion in one pot while soup bubbled away in another, side by side. She didn't remember the milk constantly going sour, bread molding overnight. But maybe she just hadn't noticed, secure in the knowledge that there would always be food without her ever having to worry, the childish knowledge that had disappeared the moment Saw booted her out of fairy.

There had to be a way, but there was no one to teach her, if she'd even been willing to ask, to admit she didn't just _know_ , and for a long time she was too busy just trying to get by. The only produce that tasted anything like right was organic and in season, anyway, and when it came down to it, Taco Bell was just cheaper.

She couldn't decide whether Saw or her mother would be more horrified to see her now, and a small, vicious part of her thought _good_.


	12. Baze, Now

The Temple has been locked down for half an hour when Baze gets the text from Cassian Andor. It makes his skin crawl, realizing he's just found out now that the Hunt is riding, that he was out in it, quite possibly with Jyn Erso and Bodhi Rook.

Nothing about this is any good.

"What is it?" Chirrut asks softly, and when he forgets and just shakes his head, "Baze."

"Nothing we can do anything about."

The Temple, he reminds himself, is a black box when the wards are up. Nothing in, nothing out. It's withstood the Hunt before, and it will again. Chirrut is safe, and that's the most important part. His heart hurts for the people texting or calling their loved ones, their friends, telling them to stay inside, stay away from the windows, stay quiet, stay _safe_. To keep the children, most of all, hidden away.

Baze knows it wouldn't be the right thing to tell them, but he can't help but thinking that this time, the best case scenario actually is that tomorrow morning, someone will have been snatched away by the Hunt, someone random, a werewolf or a demifae or, hell, a necromancer, and it will count itself satisfied and not ride again. That if the Hunt is riding to a purpose and that purpose is Bodhi Rook—Baze cannot imagine how and he cannot imagine why, but they are all well and truly fucked.

"This used to be a quiet town," he says.

"No, it didn't. I've lived here thirty-five years and it has never been quiet."

"That's because you're here," Baze says, and Chirrut grins. Every line on his face is at once dear and terrifying. He picks up Chirrut's hand off the bar and brushes his mouth against his fingers, just because he can.

Sometimes he finds himself thinking, like he's negotiating with time, _Twenty years. We could well have twenty more years, that seems very reasonable._ It's so long, lived day by day, and yet such a little space of time.

Baze has never been good with mortality.

The bar is a pressure cooker with the doors closed. So many frightened people stuck in one space, and a lot of alcohol. He's careful to monitor who he's serving and how much, but at three AM he still has to break up a scuffle between a vampire and a werewolf, which he does by simply roaring, "HEY!" to get their attention, and then letting Chirrut tell them, cheerful, "You can always take it outside."

They retreat, cowed, to their respective tables immediately, the rest of the bar glaring suspiciously at them, wondering whether Baze would really lower the wards to throw them out.

He wouldn't. Not tonight. The danger is too great, and he's not that kind of monster.

The vampires will be stuck here for the day, but there are only two of them, tonight, and every window in the place is blacked out. He'll let them decide between themselves who gets the couch in the break room and who gets a patch of floor. Tomorrow they should have time to get home before the Hunt rides, at least.

As dawn approaches, people start gathering their coats, waking those who have fallen asleep. Baze decides it's time to make the announcement. "All right, listen up!" Everyone falls gratifyingly silent. "Who here remembers the last time the Hunt rode?" A few hands go up, not enough. "This bar will not open again today," he declares. "Tomorrow, we will open at the normal time, but close half an hour before sunset. After that, it depends on whether or not the Hunt keeps riding. If you're nocturnal, tough. Go home. Stay there. When night comes, pull the curtains and lock the doors, and do not go out _no matter what_ until the Hunt stops riding. Werewolves, confer with your Alpha if they're still out close to the full; I'm sure she'll have a plan."

"How will we know when the Hunt stops riding?" a male voice calls, nervous, from somewhere in the back. Baze doesn't recognize it, off the top of his head. He'll have to ask Chirrut.

It's one of the werewolves, Dameron, he thinks, who answers for him. "Baze'll open the bar at night again." His eyes are tense. Dameron, he remembers, has a kid, a baby boy, and a wife who's not here. He's not afraid for himself. One drink with the guys has turned into a long night of waiting and praying.

This is what it means, Baze thinks, as he has thought a hundred nights before when the doors weren't even locked, to have put himself in the center of this community: they know it'll be safe when he tells them it's safe. It's funny, it certainly hadn't been his intention when he opened the place. But all is as it would meant to be, as Chirrut insists, and at least he's kept these people safe through this night.

He'll check in about Dameron's wife and kid, he decides. Make sure they're safe. He doesn't know why, but Chirrut seems to think the boy is important, and it's as good an excuse to himself for why he cares as any.


	13. Chirrut, Before

It was a bar. The place his feet had been trying to lead him since he arrived in this city was a bar.

A pity, Chirrut thought, that the drinking age in America was so ridiculous.

Chirrut pushed the door open and stepped inside, and a deep voice called out, "We're closed!" and he thought, _Oh, it's you._

"The door was unlocked," he said, feeling his way forward with his staff. It was, he thought, pretty early for a bar to be open—his internal clock was still all messed up from the time zone change—but the door _had_ been unlocked. The man who'd spoken was the only person in the room, though. He got a sense of...size. And heat. Something in the man's voice that made him think of fire, that hadn't quite come through in all the dreams. "What is this place?" he asked, just to see what the man would say.

"It's a bar," the man said, sounding amused now. "One that doesn't serve underage college kids. No matter what the drinking age is in Taiwan. Are you lost?"

Chirrut paused to be surprised that he'd placed the accent, and then he said slyly, "Not just a bar, I think." He didn't dignify the question with a response. He was never lost. Maybe he didn't know where he was, sometimes, but his feet never led him anywhere he wasn't meant to be.

"And what makes you say that?" the man asked, amusement threading through his voice.

Chirrut finished threading the maze of tables at last and reached the bar proper. He pulled out a stool and sat down. "Well," he said. "It might have something to do with the fact that I've been dreaming about you my entire life. That's not a line, by the way. I mean, it is. It's also true. What are you? You feel like a forest fire." The man from his dreams was silent for long enough that Chirrut finally said, "You're going to have to say something. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm blind."

"Not so blind, I think."

"Pretty blind, really. The eyes, at least. Do you have a name?"

"Baze. Baze Malbus."

"Baze Malbus," he repeated, trying it out. It felt right. "Chirrut Imwe."

"Chirrut Imwe," Baze said softly, also testing. "Welcome to the Fallen Temple."


	14. Jyn, Then

Jyn had known Cassian Andor for weeks when she finally thought to ask, "Where do you live, anyway?" The question startled a laugh out of him, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment. She realized, as she asked the question, not that it was odd in itself, but that it was odd that it had taken her so long to ask. That people who weren't half-feral thought about these things.

"I have an apartment over on McLaren," he said. "I would have had you over by now but my roommate's a bit..." he trailed off, considering, and finally tried, "Particular?" like he wasn't sure it was the right word.

"You have a roommate?" she asked, scandalized. "You never mentioned a roommate before!"

"Didn't I?" he asked, but Jyn knew perfectly well he knew he hadn't.

She didn't see his apartment until nearly a month later, when Cassian got shot.

There had been some wannabe vampire hunter sniffing around, knowing just enough to cause trouble and nowhere near enough to leave well enough alone, and Jyn had thought they could talk sense into the guy, or that maybe Cassian could use his glamour to convince him to stop, right up until he shot Cassian. Bullets couldn't really harm him, of course, but they could hurt quite a bit, and she'd looked the other way while Cassian drained the guy ("Well, that's one way to solve the problem," Bodhi had said, a little wide-eyed) and then driven him home, at his insistence. That was how she found out that Cassian's living room was approximately the same size as her entire apartment.

"This is nice," she kept exclaiming as she helped Cassian over to his overstuffed leather sofa. "This is nice!" It was possible she was still a little shaken up. "Where's your first aid kit?"

"Kitchen, under the sink."

Bodhi was peering at one of the (authentic-looking) figurines on the mantel, and Jyn, despite the fact that Cassian was _shot_ , paused to look at a print on the wall before she actually went into the kitchen. "This is so nice! Are these floors hardwood? What do you need a kitchen like this for even?" She felt vaguely scandalized, like how dare he have an apartment this nice (She later learned he had a spare bedroom. A spare bedroom!) but she knew that she was being ridiculous. It was just—he had an apartment like this, and he kept hanging out at her place, on the hideous sofa she'd scavenged from the curb when her neighbors moved out.

"I use the cabinets to store my guns," Cassian said.

And then a sonorous voice asked, "WHO DISTURBS MY SLUMBER?" and Bodhi leapt back from the mantel, yelping, as a giant black _thing_ with elongated limbs appeared. Jyn almost dropped the first aid kit, remembering Krennic's shadow monsters that had killed her mother.

Cassian rolled his eyes and said, "Kaytu, stop playing around, these are my friends."

"Oh," Kaytu said, in what Jyn would later learn was his normal voice. It sounded kind of British. "I thought I was your friend."

"You're also my friend. These are my new friends."

Kaytu seemed, inasmuch as Jyn could read him at all, slightly put off by that. "Are you Jyn Erso?" he asked Bodhi.

"Bodhi. Bodhi Rook."

Kaytu turned his glowing eyes on Jyn. "So you must be Jyn Erso."

"I..."

"Kaytu, Jyn, Jyn, Kaytu, a little help here?"

Kaytu studied Cassian with seeming dispassion and said, "You have been shot."

"Yeah, no shit."

"I miss Melshi. Melshi never got you shot."

Cassian gave a pained laugh. " _Amigo_ , Melshi shot me himself on three separate occasions."

And then Kaytu took another look at Bodhi and said, "Oh," and some kind of staring match commenced.

"Is there going to be a problem?" Cassian asked.

"I don't think so," Bodhi said, but he sounded a little uncertain, and he didn't look away from Kaytu.

"Well, I was going to make him fish out the bullet, but...I can do it myself," Cassian said.

"Would you really rather do it yourself or are you saying that because you're afraid I'm going to be squeamish?" Jyn asked. "Because, witch. Witch who was raised by Saw Gerrera, at that." She pulled on the gloves from the kit. "Not my first rodeo."

By the time she finished, Bodhi and Kaytu had come to some kind of accord Bodhi couldn't explain and Kaytu wouldn't. She offered to bleed for Cassian for the second time, and for the second time, he turned her down flat, preferring a pint of O positive from his fridge. "I can't get behind the 'stealing from the blood banks' thing," she said.

"We only take what they reject," Cassian told her. "It's all very moderately ethical."

"So your roommate's a demon."

"That he is."

"What's the story on that?"

Cassian looked at Kaytu. Kaytu looked at Cassian. Finally, Cassian said, "It's complicated."

"It paints him in a rather embarrassing light, is what he means to say," Kaytu said.

"I mean that it's complicated."

"If you say so, Cassian. I will see to him from here, Jyn Erso. You may leave."

"Is your demon roommate throwing me out?" Jyn asked, vaguely delighted.

"You may leave," Kaytu repeated.

"I'm so sorry about him," Cassian said, but he did let his demon roommate throw her and Bodhi out. They'd been going, anyway. Dawn was coming, and Cassian needed his rest to let the wound heal.


	15. Cassian, Now

The first thing Cassian does when he wakes up is text Melshi.

Actually, that's not true. The first thing Cassian does upon waking is stumble to his feet, trying not to knock half of Jyn's clothes off the hangers like he had last time, and out of the closet. Then the first thing he does is, he digs his phone out of his pocket and texts Melshi, _Do you sparkle yet?_ It's not sunset on the West Coast yet, he won't respond for hours, so then he goes in search of the others. It's not hard. He just opens the bedroom door and there they are, sitting on the couch together watching _Say Yes to the Dress_. Bodhi likes it when they're happy and they cry. Jyn won't admit it, but Cassian thinks she likes looking at the dresses. "Where's my gun?" he asks, and Jyn gestures to the dinette table, where it's lying there waiting for him. He scrubs one hand over his face. He feels disgusting. He checks the gun before he holsters it, then tells them, "I need to get home."

"It's after sunset," Bodhi protests, eyes wide. So Jyn filled him in on the Wild Hunt. Good.

Jyn has never said, but Cassian doesn't think she ever ran with Saw Gerrera's Hunt. He thinks the possibility it was incipient is why Saw kicked her unceremoniously out of fairy. But then, he's been wrong before, and if she got caught up in it, it is what it is. Plenty of people have woken up the next morning with blood on their hands and leaves in their hair and _what the hell happened?_ in their head. Plenty of people have never torn themselves away at all.

"It's not moonrise yet, it's fine," Cassian assures him. "I'll be quick. I need to check on Kaytu. I left him with a project, and—I'll sleep better in my own bed tomorrow." His bed is a mattress on the floor of his closet, but at least it is a mattress.

"Hurry," Jyn tells him, like he needs to be told.

When he gets home, he locks the door and makes sure all the curtains are closed first, then hops in the shower. Kaytu's bored after spending most of the last few days alone, so he lets the shadowy demon follow him around the apartment chattering about the effects of Jyn Erso on his life, making agreeing sounds whenever it seems appropriate. He drinks a bag of O negative from the fridge, cold. Bagged blood is nothing like warm, fresh blood from a vein, but it'll keep him going. He starts cleaning his sniper rifle. He might need it soon enough. He's saving Tivik's phone for later, something to focus on when he's starting to feel cooped up and still has hours to go before dawn.

The sun finally sets on the west coast, and Melshi texts him back, the same reply he's sent every time Cassian's sent him that taunt since he moved to Seattle: _Are you there yet?_

It used to be, Cassian would reply, _Thinking about it._ Then, it was, _Getting there._ Now, Cassian very carefully, very deliberately types, _Yes._ Hits send.

It's done.

The answer comes through a moment later, before he's even set down the phone. _On my way._ It's not really even code, nor is it something they've ever discussed out loud. It doesn't need to be either of those things. Between the two of them the understanding's deep enough to let subtext take the place of subterfuge, and anyway, Draven never learned phones.

Melshi is older than Cassian. He'd been already working for Draven when he dragged Cassian home. Cassian knows nothing at all about his past before he met him. But he knows this: once, he asked Melshi to kill him. It wasn't the only time he's been suicidal, but the only time he's gotten that far. Definitely the only time he asked Melshi, because Melshi blinked at him and said, "Not that I've never thought about it, but as an academic exercise. I would never actually _do_ it."

That's Melshi.

Melshi was also the person who taught him how to work with the commanding geas of his master, back when he was still human and it was all hypothetical. He'd felt like a traitor even asking, like Melshi would tell Draven and he'd be out on the streets, but he'd asked, because he'd known Melshi would answer, and he'd somehow known that Melshi had tried. "There's no way out that I've ever found," Melshi had told him. "But there are things you can do. Make sure the conditions where you'd have to fulfill it never happen. Work to the letter of it, not the spirit. Use your brain, Andor. God gave you a good one."

Cassian deletes the exchange and goes back to cleaning his gun. "Kaytu," he says. "I want you to craft a scenario for me."

"Oh?" Kaytu asks, perking up. He has some special affinity for battles, for creating strategies and calculating the probability of success. He's happiest when Cassian takes him out in the field with him, but Cassian is always afraid the statue he's tethered to will get damaged, and tries to hold off on that when he can avoid it.

 _No going back,_ he thinks. There wasn't before he even texted Melshi. There was no going back from this decision when Draven looked him in the face and casually ordered him to kill Jyn's father. Draven, he tells himself, betrayed him first. But this...saying it out loud will make it real.

"For if I have to kill Draven," he says.

Kaytu's eyes glow brighter for a moment. "Ah." Cassian looks up at him, daring him, and Kaytu says, "Well, it's about time."

Cassian doesn't know why, but that wasn't the response he expected. "Excuse me?"

"Sons can only live in their fathers' shadows for so long." Draven isn't Cassian's father, he wants to protest, except that in a way, he is. "And some fathers do not cope well with being surpassed. In some dynasties patricide has been a respectable way to ascend the throne."

Cassian blinks. "I don't want his throne." Petty and small though it may be, Cassian just wants to live, to help people with Jyn and Bodhi, not to be spymaster of the city's vampires. "And I don't really want to kill him, either."

"No, I have noticed that," Kaytu agrees. "But I do not see any other statistically feasible way to remove his interference from your life."

And that, Cassian thinks, is that

He can hear motorcycles in the distance, and somewhere, geese.

His apartment is on the top floor. He stands without thinking about it, takes two steps toward the windows. Kaytu's voice calls him back. "Cassian. I would not." Cassian looks back at the spidery, shadowy form of his best friend. "There is nothing out there tonight that you would want to see."

There is, though. There is oblivion, and the hunt, and blood on your hands and in your mouth, and waking in the morning and knowing that nothing you did in the night was truly your fault. The Wild Hunt is particularly dangerous to vampires; it calls to all their basest instincts. It also kills: those who don't join it permanently frequently wake up after dawn and out of doors. But more importantly, this Hunt is probably after Bodhi, and maybe Jyn. Cassian could no more join it than he could cut out his own heart.

"Yeah," he says, and steps away from the window.


	16. Cassian, Before

Cassian was six when his parents died. He knew that.

He didn't know if he was eight or nine when he tried to pick the wrong pocket and the man turned around, too quick, quicker than anyone had any right to be, and grabbed his wrist. He'd lost track of time in the interim. He didn't suppose it mattered, except that, looking forward from that day, he would kind of like to know if he was twenty-five or twenty-six when he died.

Anyway, the man grabbed his wrist and squeezed so hard the bones ground together, so hard Cassian hadn't had to fake his tears and then—he'd eased off. Not let go, because he wasn't stupid, he'd known Cassian would have disappeared in a flash if he'd done that, but eased off.

"Well now," Draven had said. "How would you like to earn some easier money, boy?"

Cassian, aged eight or nine, had spit in his face and called him a pervert, and Draven had laughed.

Honestly, the choice between living on the streets and picking pockets and being Draven's little errand boy, and later Draven's little enforcer, had been no choice at all. He'd learned later that Draven had considered turning him while he was still a teenager, for how unsettling people found him even before he had fangs and the stillness of the undead to his credit, but there were people above Draven in the vampire power structure, people who frowned on making children vampires, even if Cassian hadn't been a child for a long time even when he first met Draven. That whim had passed, though, and even when Cassian had officially, inarguably become an adult, Draven had left him human for a few more years. Had left him that way, in fact, until Cassian got shot on one of his jobs for him. The wound might have been survivable, even given the medical practices of the day, but turning him was cheaper than a doctor, so Cassian had gone down into death and woken up more of a monster than he'd already been, and bound to Davits Draven for all the nights to come.

If he could go back, if he could talk to that eight or nine year old boy that he'd been, Cassian thought he would tell him he was better off on the streets. But he knew he wouldn't have listened. That he, later, can have regrets meant that he, then, lived, and that was all the math that had mattered.


	17. Bodhi, Now

The Hunt rides for three nights, which is apparently short, especially considering that at the end of it, as far as anyone can tell, no one is missing or dead. Baze doesn't like it, doesn't trust it, and he keeps the bar closed another three nights, waiting for the other shoe to drop, before reluctantly reopening. He won't let Bodhi come in for his next shift, tells him to stay home just in case.

Bodhi thinks, honestly, about just walking outside when the Hunt is riding. Thinks about some innocent person getting taken instead of him, and he almost can't stand it. He thinks about what would happen if he let them take him, but then he thinks about Jyn and Cassian. "We won't let anything happen to you," Jyn said, and she meant it. She always does. He doesn't want her or Cassian to get hurt because of him.

He thinks Jyn knows what he's thinking, a little, at least. From sundown to sunrise during those two nights, she stays up, in the kitchen, working on spells that have to be done at night and at this phase of the moon. Keeping herself between him and the door. She claims she's too nervous to sleep.

He's pretty sure she makes at least one of the spells up as an excuse.

On the second night Baze keeps the Temple open again, Cassian shows up at their door and declares they should go for a drink, and Jyn says a little too brightly that she thinks that's a great idea. Bodhi wants to tell them that he's not dumb, that he knows this is a show of confidence or strength or something. That people have put his little episode and the sudden appearance of the Wild Hunt together and gotten some magically significant number, and that now they need to show that see, the Hunt must not have been after him at all, nothing to see here. Show that they are not afraid, even if they are. He wants to say these things, but Cassian and Jyn are brittle and he doesn't have a better idea of what to do next, so they might as well go to the bar and have a drink.

Cassian is carrying a backpack, and when Bodhi asks him about it, he shrugs and says, "Why does Jyn carry a purse?"

"Are you on the rag, Cassian?" Jyn asks, and Cassian just shrugs again and raises his beer to his mouth, but doesn't drink it. He does that about half the time, saying he needs to not be drunk, even though it would take a lot more than one beer to get a vampire tipsy. It might also be that he can't drink anything but blood right now. Bodhi still isn't clear on how that works, but he knows that with everybody staying in Cassian probably hasn't gotten enough blood in the last few days. Cassian probably does need to not be drunk, though: for once, he's openly armed, which means there are probably at least two more weapons Bodhi doesn't know about.

He wonders if Cassian is carrying the backpack for the _real_ reason Jyn carries a purse: her baton, collapsed, fits in it, and uncollapsed is enough cold iron to break just about anything's kneecaps. He eyes the backpack, which appears to be pretty full, with a new wariness after he thinks that.

Bodhi isn't drinking, either, because he turns out not to like Guinness—this sort of thing is also fairly common. Trying something new doesn't always work out so well. What is far less common is that instead of Jyn claiming both of their drinks for her own, she's barely sipping her rum and Coke. There's a definite tension in the air, but it doesn't seem to be directed toward Bodhi.

"It's always like this after the Hunt rides," Cassian says, offhand, but still a little like he's reading Bodhi's mind. Bodhi eyes him suspiciously.

"Waiting for the other shoe to drop," Jyn says.

"But—but if the Hunt's gone," Bodhi says slowly, and then isn't sure how to finish without accusing a roomful of supernaturals of being scaredy-cats.

"The Hunt having come reminds them that the Hunt can come back," Cassian explains. "And that we are all almost powerless before it."

"Saw and his people aren't—they aren't that bad," Jyn says, defensive, and when Cassian looks disbelieving at her, she amends, "I mean, they're dangerous. But on their own, they can be dealt with. Probably even reasoned with. But when he calls the Hunt—it's a force of nature. It would be like trying to fight a hurricane."

"Even Baze thinks he can't fight the Hunt," Cassian says, and then he corrects himself. "Well, no, I don't know what Baze thinks. Only Chirrut knows that. But I know he's wary of it."

Bodhi considers all of this, and takes another sip of his Guinness to see if he likes it more ten minutes later. Still too bitter, he decides with a wince. "I need the restroom," he declares, and flees the table.

He does not, in fact, need the restroom. He rarely does, but he figured out before he even left Galen that it was a way to be _alone_ for a few minutes, with no one following him. What he needs is air, and from the hall with the bathrooms it's easy to slip into the service areas of the bar, and then out the back door.

He hears a motorcycle in the distance but doesn't think anything of it, not until he hears a dog barking, or maybe it's geese. He turns to go back inside, to warn Baze, thinking _stupid, stupid._

He doesn't make it.


	18. Jyn, Before

When Jyn Erso was eight years old, Orson Krennic and his shadow monsters came for her father.

Her parents had practiced with her, many times, what she should do if ever this happened, although they had not named, specifically, the danger they sought to protect her from. Perhaps they feared the name traveling on wind and shadow to its owners ears, as so many others she met in her lifetime did. She didn't know. She never got the chance to ask them. She knew that her mother, instead of coming with her as her parents had always promised her she would, gave Jyn her kyber crystal necklace and then turned back for Jyn's father, even though she had to know there was no way she could tear him away safe at that point.

Jyn watched her mother die from behind a tree, and it was only when Krennic said, "They had a child. Find her," that she remembered herself and ran through the woods to the hiding place that might have been why her parents chose this house in the first place: a meadow as perfect as anything out of a storybook, and in the middle of it, a fairy ring.

"You mustn't ever enter the ring until it's time," her father cautioned her time and time again. "Until you really have to."

"What will happen when I do?" she'd asked, and he'd kissed her forehead.

"No one will be able to find you to hurt you, Stardust. That's what will happen."

And that was what happened. Jyn sat in the center of the ring of toadstools and watched the shadow monsters prowl around the perimeter, even watched Krennic ask what the holdup was, couldn't they find one worthless child? She sat, and she watched, and she didn't make a sound, and none of them saw her, and none of them dared to enter the ring. And then they left, and Jyn was alone.

For two days and two nights, she sat in the center of the fairy ring. She was cold, and she was scared, and she was weak from hunger and thirst, but she didn't dare to move, even though she didn't know what would happen next. Mama wasn't coming for her. She was dead. Papa had surely been taken away by the monsters and their master. There wasn't anybody else, she thought.

By the morning of the third day, she had about made her mind up. She would have to get up, sneak back to the house. She could take the box of granola bars from the pantry and the juice from the fridge and bring them back to the ring, and then she would be safe again.

She never had to set her plan into action, though, because before she could a man came striding out of the forest, a tall-dark-skinned man who wasn't human. The woods he walked out of weren't the woods Jyn knew, the ones she'd played in ever since they moved here and been staring at for the past two days. There was something darker and wilder about the forest she saw over Saw Gerrera's shoulder the first time she met him: her first glimpse of the realms of fairy. He stepped right into the fairy ring with her and bent down and held out his hand to her when she scrambled away. "Come, child," he said gently. "You're Lyra's child. Your mother sent me."

"My mother's dead." She flung it at him like a weapon, and was glad to see it hit true, glad to see the sorrow in his eyes. At least someone was sorry.

"Yes," Saw Gerrera agreed. "And so I think you'd better come with me, now."


	19. Jyn, Now

Bodhi's been gone about five minutes when Cassian asks, "Do you think he's okay?"

"I'm sure he's fine," Jyn says. "He just needs a minute. So what's in the bag?"

Cassian looks across the table at her. "What do you think is in the bag?"

Jyn considers and rejects several possibilities before asking, "Do you have a demon in your backpack?" She feels a weird sense of delight and kinship, which only intensifies when Cassian Andor fucking smirks at her. "You do. You have a demon in a backpack. In a bar." The backpack has a padded appearance; she suspects said demon is wrapped in towels or something.

Cassian tilts his head a little, the smirk curling around the corners of his mouth. "It never hurts to be cautious."

She thinks, _God, I fucking love you,_ and she smothers it down. They're not—they're not that. She wishes they could be, and she thinks maybe Cassian does, too, but neither of them has ever been able to figure out the steps to make it happen. Plus, there's Bodhi to consider. She loves him, too, but differently. She never has to worry about Cassian, the way she does about Bodhi, while Bodhi...Bodhi is more familiar, after sharing her space for three years. She doesn't know how to make it work without someone getting hurt.

Speaking of..."He probably should be back by now," she allows at the same time as, over by the bar, Chirrut stands suddenly and strides purposefully toward the back.

"Something's wrong," Cassian says, already on his feet to follow him. Jyn hurries after him as Baze shouts something to one of the older demifae at the bar and follows his husband.

Bodhi isn't in the bathroom. He isn't in the break room, or the office, or the stockroom. It becomes very quickly apparent that Bodhi isn't anywhere in the building.

Baze opens the door to the alley behind the building and they all stare, bleak, at the mess of hoof and paw prints tearing up the gravel. Chirrut bends down and unerringly picks something up from the ground as easily as if he can see it, and maybe he can: it's a single large black feather, perfect in its form, shining faintly as if lit from within. "I thought I heard motorcycles the other night," Cassian says, confused.

"The Hunt takes many forms," Jyn explains, wrapping her arms around herself to keep out the chill seeping into her bones. "But the oldest ones are the truest." The Hunt has Bodhi. The Hunt has _Bodhi_. _Saw, what have you done?_ she thinks.

"Can you track them?" Baze asks Cassian.

"I--" he says, gesturing helplessly. "Baze, it's _the Wild Hunt_."

Baze merely turns to Chirrut. "Can you track them?"

Chirrut shakes his head, grim. "Not fast enough."

Cassian shakes his backpack, says, "Kaytu, _despiértate_." The spidery black form of the demon unfolds himself into being in the alley, scanning his surroundings with those glowing eyes. "Can you track them? The people that took Bodhi?" Cassian asks, not bothering with niceties. There's no time for any of that now.

Kaytu considers it for a moment before he says, "No," with horrible finality. Cassian swears comprehensively in Spanish; Baze says something in some language Jyn doesn't know that raises the temperature in the alley at least five degrees.

Jyn clutches the kyber crystal over her heart and takes a deep breath. "I," she says. She has to clear her throat to continue, with the way they all look so sharply at her. "I know where they would have taken him."

"You know where the Hunt goes?" Baze asks.

"Of course," she says. "I lived there for eight years. But we can't get in there," or at least, the doors have been closed to her for almost another eight years now, "and anyway they won't have taken him there. This isn't—Saw wouldn't just hunt Bodhi to bag an angel." She doesn't know _why_ Saw would want to hunt Bodhi, why he couldn't just _talk_ to her about whatever is going on, but she knows that much. "There's a place out in the forest. We can hike in from the werewolves' land."

"I don't know any place near the werewolves' land," Baze says, frowning.

"You can't find it unless you're looking for it," she explains.

"Well, then," Chirrut says. "Let's go looking for it."

There's a hissed argument between Chirrut and Baze they don't have time for, that amounts to Baze not wanting Chirrut to go off without him, Chirrut being impossible to dissuade, and someone having to tend the damn bar. Finally, Baze declares, "We don't have time. Go, and I'll meet you there." Jyn wonders how Baze is going to meet them there, but they don't have time for that, either. They just pile into Cassian's car and _go_.

***

They leave the car in front of the little cluster of cabins on the werewolves' land and head off into the woods. Between the werewolves and the fae, the woods out here are untamed, untouched, and they're basically following deer trails most of the way until Jyn finds one of the paths used by the Hunt when Saw leads it out of fairy. They can't risk a light, and Jyn trips more than Chirrut does, which, she supposes when she gets over her hurt pride at the exasperated look Cassian gives her after the third root, makes sense. He's substantially more accustomed to navigating obstacles he can't see.

Baze doesn't catch up to them, but they don't have time to wait for him. Especially not once they get in sight of the clearing with the stone circle, and the torches are lit and Saw has Bodhi _tied to an altar_. "Oh, I'm gonna fucking--" she mutters, stalking forward with purpose, baton naked in her hand.

"Jyn!" Cassian hisses, grabbing for her arm, but he misses. She hears him mutter, "So much for stealth," behind her and keeps going.

"SAW!"

Everything stops. The dancing, the chanting. Everyone turns to look at her, and Saw says, sounding surprised and, weirdly, a little fond, "Jyn!" He's gone further into the Hunt than he had when she last saw him. His legs are those of a great wolf; antlers sprout from his head. Soon he will be of the Hunt entirely, she thinks, and the Saw Gerrera she knew will be lost. His eyes flit to the iron baton in her hand, he reads the fury on her face, and he asks, confused, "Are we not still friends?"

For a moment, Jyn is struck speechless, only able to gesture furiously with the baton at the entire ridiculous scene. Then, she finds her words: "I was sixteen! I was sixteen and you threw me out with a loaded six-shooter and not so much as a by-your-leave and now—now you've got my roommate tied to a _plinth_! What do you think?!"

Saw looks at Bodhi, then back at her, almost comically confused. "Jyn, it cannot be allowed to continue to live. This is for the best, you'll see."

One of the pookas apparently takes this as a cue, picking up a long silver knife, and Jyn points the baton at him. "Drop the knife." He just looks at her with hard, flat eyes, nothing like a human. _Too much of the Hunt in them all,_ she thinks, and she barks again, "Drop the knife!"

He doesn't drop the knife.

The gunshot rings out like a crack of thunder.

The pooka collapses, shot cleanly in the head, as Cassian steps into the clearing, gun aimed steadily at Saw, Kaytu at one shoulder and Chirrut at the other. He bares his teeth at the fairies, eyes glittering darkly. "Who's next?"

Somewhere nearby, there's a sound, a sort of _whumpf_ , that Jyn can only describe as something very heavy landing very lightly, but she might be imagining it. Her ears are still ringing a little from the gunshot. She doesn't understand how Cassian can even hear.

Saw sizes them up and then turns back to Jyn, "Jyn, you must understand--"

"What? What do I need to understand, Saw?"

"The last time one of his kind walked the earth--"

"Were you here for that, Gerrera?" Baze strolls out of the woods as casually as a man can while carrying an assault rifle, his face a polite mask. "I don't remember you being there for that. And it's nothing to do with the boy. He's not that sort."

"Malbus," Saw says. "We had an understanding."

"We did," Baze agrees. "But you kidnapped my employee from my property."

"He was outside the building!"

"You kidnapped," Baze repeats, more slowly, sounding like he's holding onto his patience by threads, "my employee. From my property. Release him and walk away, and we have no need to speak of this further."

"The boy is no threat," Chirrut adds.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jyn thinks she should have _made_ him a threat. Her and Cassian, between them, they could have taught Bodhi to fight a goddamn army in the last three years. But they didn't, because he's Bodhi. Because they looked at him and saw something shining bright and wanted to protect that light.

"Saw," she says. "This is bad. I'm not going to lie. I don't know if I can forgive you this." His heart breaks in his eyes, and she thinks he's not quite sane. Surely he would have realized that before, if he were. "But it doesn't have to end badly. Let Bodhi go." She isn't sure she believes it. Even if she can persuade Saw, the rest of the Hunt is still balanced on the edge of a knife, wanting their kill. Once the Hunt is called, it will be answered.

"Jyn," Saw says, like he's begging her to understand. "We would all be safer if he was gone."

"If we killed everyone we'd be safer without the human race would be eradicated." She takes a guess. "Is this because of Krennic?"

"Draven says Krennic wants to end the world," Cassian says softly, "and make himself king of the ashes. That right?" 

Saw nods. "Shadows. Not ashes. But yes." 

It's the first Jyn's heard of it. Cassian had been tense and silent all the way back from Krennic's house the other night, and then after that everything went crazy really fast. She hasn't gotten a chance to ask him what the hell happened there.

"It's not an uncommon ambition for mad sorcerers," Baze rumbles.

 _King of Shadows_ , Jyn thinks, and a shiver runs down her spine. "And I suppose he needs an angel to power his spell."

"Yes," Saw says, relieved that she finally understands. "To trade light for darkness, you understand? The power of the exchange."

She recognizes the sort of thing Galen Erso used to mutter, bent over his notes, when she hears them coming out of someone else's mouth. _Papa, what have you done?_ Gotten a message to Saw, apparently, although she can't believe he meant him to kill Bodhi, and she tries not to let the fact that she hasn't heard so much as a peep sting. "We're going to find a way to stop it," she says. "We're going to find _another_ way. Now let Bodhi go."

"Jyn. You know I cannot. You know that once the Hunt has ridden they will have their prey."

"He isn't your prey. This is all wrong. You don't pick your quarry before you ever set out!"

Saw looks sad and disappointed at her. "I am sorry, Jyn."

One of the Gabriel Hounds twitches forward. Cassian shoots it, and just like that it's a free for all, their negotiations clearly at an end. Jyn's at an advantage, with her weapon being cold iron, but Chirrut is kicking an amount of ass that still surprises her despite having seen him deliver a beatdown or three in the past. Kaytu is basically a tank, and she uses him for cover as she works her way over to the altar, where, any god that might be listening be thanked, none of the fairies have thought to just stick a knife in him and end it already. She yanks the gag out of his mouth and he says, "Sorry, I'm so sorry."

"What are you sorry about?" Jyn asks as she grabs for the ceremonial dagger in the hand of the dead pooka. "You should be able to stand outside without getting kidnapped. That seems like a reasonable ambition." She gets one hand free, then the other, and helps him up, scanning the scene. Saw is still standing stock still in the middle of it all, like a statue of himself. Her eyes find Cassian just in time to see him spit out something that might be a chunk of trachea, and she hopes, vaguely, that Bodhi didn't see that. She and Kaytu between them work Bodhi over to the edge of the clearing before she calls back for the others, "I've got him, run!"

They run, Baze laying down covering fire as Cassian snatches the backpack containing Kaytu's statue from behind the tree where he'd left it. They run, but it's the middle of the night in the middle of the forest and she and Chirrut are close enough to human, with human lungs, and eventually they have to stop, panting, all of them except Kaytu wild-eyed and afraid when they hear the hunting horn sound behind them.

All of them except Kaytu...and Baze. He straightens, looking over his shoulder, and then he sighs and hands the rifle to Jyn. "Take care of this for me, little sister," he says. "I like that gun."

"What--" Jyn says. "What are you going to do?"

"Teach some fae some manners," he says, and he—changes.

Jyn makes a tiny sound in the back of her throat. Behind her, Cassian says, "Oh."

Everyone always wonders what Baze Malbus is. Big, they'll say, and old, and _hot_. The answer, she thinks, should have been obvious.

Chirrut rests one hand on the dragon's nose for a moment, says, "Try not to burn the whole forest down." And then the dragon—Baze—is gone in a mighty beating of wings, and Chirrut says, "Well, come on, then!" and they're off again.

There's a light on in one of the cabins, and another car parked outside when they tumble out of the woods. Jyn recognizes it as the local alpha's car, and hopes they're not going to be in trouble again. Bodhi, at least, has standing permission to be here, she reminds herself.

"Do we get out of here?" Cassian asks. "Or do we seek shelter inside?"

The problem is solved for them when the door to the cabin with the light opens, and the local Seelie lord, Lord Bail, steps out, saying something to the alpha and nodding politely to all of them as if they'd met on the street or in the courts of fairy before he walks off into the woods on the other side without a word. Mon Mothma smiles at them warmly and says, "Well, you'd better come inside. The Hunt is out tonight, you know."

"I have so many questions," Bodhi mutters, sounding a little stunned, and Jyn could not agree more.


	20. Jyn, Then

It almost happened, once.

They'd almost died, or it felt like they had—it had been way too close. Jyn should have known better than to trust a kelpie as far as she could throw him in horse form, and had beat herself up over the whole thing for a long time, even after Baze had stopped glaring at her. That took a while, owing mainly to the fact that Chirrut's involvement in the whole thing had started with Jyn asking him, "Do you want to go get in trouble?" and ended with three broken bones and a punctured lung.

Bodhi had stayed at the hospital, waiting for Chirrut to get out of surgery, with Baze, because Baze wasn't glaring daggers at him, because it was basically impossible to hold a grudge against Bodhi. Cassian had taken Jyn back to her apartment, and they had fallen on each other in their sheer relief to be alive, Cassian backing Jyn up against the kitchen cabinets and kissing her like both their lives depended on it.

It had almost happened, but at some point it had registered in Jyn's adrenaline-hazed mind that Cassian's fangs had dropped, and she licked against one of them and he jumped back like he'd been electrocuted.

"You could," Jyn said, somehow thinking she could still salvage this situation.

"I couldn't," Cassian protested, and he threw out, "Bodhi." It should have seemed like a non sequitur, but she somehow understood what he meant, even if she couldn't put it more clearly into words himself. "This is—I should go."

As soon as he'd shut the door behind him, Jyn punched the wall, which turned out to be a much better idea if you were nonhuman, on TV, or Chirrut. Cassian wound up not leaving after all, because she needed him to drive her back to the emergency room.

Bodhi assumed she'd broken her finger during the fight somehow, and Jyn let him, even though he felt terrible about not having noticed before and she felt vaguely guilty every time he kindly helped her with something while it was healing. Baze probably thought she'd punched the wall out of frustration over Chirrut, and while it still took him a while to forgive her, his glares softened a bit after that. Chirrut, being Chirrut, knew, and found the whole thing hilarious, but he was on a lot of medication for a while so no one paid him that much mind. She didn't think Kaytu even noticed.

She and Cassian never spoke of it again. She never got a bill from the hospital, and assumed he'd taken care of it. Under any other circumstances, she would have yelled at him, but she would have had to bring it up to do that, and she wasn't about to do that.


	21. Cassian, Now

Draven is inside the cabin, which is—Draven doesn't come to anybody, not even Mon Mothma. Maybe especially not Mon Mothma; the rivalry between the werewolves and the vampires is old and well worn in. But Draven is here, and so was Lord Bail, who walked into the woods where the Hunt was riding as casually as if he were going for a stroll in the elflands.

Draven is out while the Hunt is riding. Baze Malbus is a motherfucking dragon. And Mon Mothma is making them hot cocoa.

Cassian doesn't understand anything.

"Why don't I get cocoa?" Kaytu asks when the Alpha passes the cups around, not really trying to be quiet. He doesn't seem to understand the concept, no matter how many times Cassian tries to explain it to him, but then, there's probably no being quiet enough to slip under Mothma's radar.

"You can't drink it," Cassian mutters back.

"Well, neither can you."

Cassian winces internally at being called out on his weakness in front of Draven—and it is a weakness. Vampires can only manage even other liquids when they have enough blood in them to start with, and Cassian doesn't. If he took a sip out of one of those mugs, his body would frantically try to pull things out of it that aren't in most people's hot cocoa, and he would be spectacularly sick. It's a state he's been in too often lately, and it's something he'll have to correct if he's going to have any hope of success in his plans. Mon Mothma hands him the last cup anyway, with a sympathetic smile, and murmurs, "I can make another."

"That is really not necessary," he assures her. He'll wind up giving his to Bodhi, probably, although Bodhi is too busy nervously making sure his sleeves cover his raw, gleaming wrists to really drink his cocoa. Jyn's hands are shaking, and she raises her cup to her mouth with both hands, Baze's assault rifle across her knees like a child's comfort toy. Cassian wonders if she once counted any of the people he killed tonight as friends.

He isn't sorry.

"What were you doing out in the middle of the Hunt?" Draven asks Cassian.

Chirrut answers for him while he's still trying to formulate a reply that isn't _Me?_ "They took my husbands' employee." He smiles serenely over the rim of his cup. "We got him back."

"They weren't exactly—they weren't following the rules," Jyn says. "That isn't what the Wild Hunt is." She amends it, "It's not what it's supposed to be." She turns to Chirrut. "Did you know?"

He smiles again, somehow understanding what she's asking about before Cassian's even puzzled it out himself. "Of course I did. You didn't think I would have married him if I didn't, did you?"

"I thought he was Chinese," Cassian says, the closest he can get to looking it in the face. He feels a little like he did when he first saw Bodhi, when he first _understood_ Bodhi. And while he's not really firm on much about dragons, considering he thought they _weren't fucking real_ until today, he's pretty sure the firebreathing thing comes from Europe, not Asia.

"Legends and myths," Chirrut says, sounding fond. "I said something similar once. You'd have to ask him."

Cassian cannot imagine doing so. Jyn, he notices, looks equally dubious.

"What would Saw Gerrera want with him?" Draven asks, silky and dangerous. The question doesn't seem to be directed to him in particular, so Cassian doesn't answer. He just looks at Jyn, and Jyn looks back at him. Chirrut, sitting crosslegged on the floor, sips his cocoa. Bodhi shakes like a leaf, skittering nervous glances over at Draven. Kaytu, standing in the corner, watches it all like it's a tennis match.

The silence stretches out, though, and eventually Cassian has to say something. He goes with, "To kill him, obviously. That's what the Hunt does."

"The girl said--" Draven stops, looking at Jyn, who looks at him with one eyebrow slightly raised, daring him to find where she had said the Hunt didn't want to kill Bodhi. Draven closes his mouth, looking sour.

Mon Mothma returns from the kitchen holding another cup of cocoa, and Cassian is about to protest that his demon really doesn't need a drink when she opens the front door and Baze stomps in, smelling of smoke. Cassian cannot count how many times he has noticed that Baze Malbus smells like a wood fire, and he never even thought. "Oh, thank you," he says, taking the cup from her, "that's very kind."

"You've had quite a night."

"You can say that again. I don't think the Hunt—that Hunt, at least—will trouble this area again any time soon."

Mothma turns toward him, cutting off the rest of the room, and says so softly Cassian thinks even he wasn't meant to hear, "You would do well to strengthen your wards. There's a storm coming."

"I'll take that under advisement." He looks them over, his eyes stopping on Jyn, and Cassian watches him take in the way her eyes are still a little round, her hands shaking around the cup, and decide not to take back the rifle just yet. It makes him feel a little more warmly toward him than he did already. Instead, he goes to loom over Chirrut like a wall, and tips his chin toward Draven. "Draven."

"Malbus," Draven says.

"Good," Mon Mothma says, sounding mildly amused. "We all know everybody's names. This saves me a trip, actually. Mr. Andor, Miss Erso, I'd been meaning to speak with you."

"Oh?" Jyn asks.

"You solve problems," Mothma says, and Cassian thinks that's quite the simplification.

"They also cause problems," Baze rumbles. That, Cassian will allow, is more accurate. Chirrut reaches over and pats his husband's booted foot, _there, there_.

"If Galen Erso has, in fact, returned from wherever he has been for the last three years," Mon Mothma says, picking her way through her words with the characteristic diplomacy that had earned her the respect and obedience of every werewolf in the city, "then that is likely to become...a problem, do you not agree?"

"He wasn't a problem before," Cassian says, ignoring the looks Draven is shooting him. Draven probably thinks he's being subtle, is the sad part.

"According to Lord Bail, there was a wild surge of magical energy around the time Krennic and Erso fell off the map," Mothma says. "And then again last week. Add to it every unsavory thing we all know about Krennic, and...I think you have to agree it's a problem. And Erso's the only person who even maybe knows what's going on. He needs to be found."

"Do you," Bodhi says, looking curiously at Draven. "Is there something wrong with your eye?"

Draven looks sour at him, and Cassian has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

"Saw said it was a sort of energy spell," Jyn says. "He wants to...flip a massive amount of light energy for dark."

"And where does he propose to get the light energy?" Draven asks, his attention neatly diverted, as had been Jyn's intent.

Jyn looks him coolly in the eye. "I really couldn't tell you." Beside her on the loveseat, Bodhi fidgets once more with the cuffs of his sleeves. "I don't know how Saw knew. It's possible my father's been in contact with him, but he didn't say, and—certainly he's not going to tell me _now_. I don't know where to find him. I wouldn't know where to begin to look."

"Actually," Mothma says, "we do."

Chirrut nods. "The energy disruption."

"Do you think you can find it?" Mothma asks him.

"Well," he says slowly, "I don't know. I suppose we'll find out."

An awkward silence falls upon the room, everyone hesitating to be the one to break it. Finally, Baze takes on the responsibility, saying, "I should get back to my bar."

"Did you not close early?" Chirrut asks him as he rises gracefully to his feet.

"No, I left it on the honor system," Baze says, making a face at his own foolishness. Chirrut just laughs. "Thank you for your hospitality," he says to Mon.

"Please, it livened up my evening," she says, waving him off like she wasn't just having some kind of secret meeting with Draven and Lord Bail in the middle of nowhere while the Hunt was riding, like her evening wasn't lively enough already. "Leave your cups, I'll see to them." Cassian ignores her, passing his own cup, lukewarm though it is, to Bodhi, and collecting his and Jyn's empty cups to take to the kitchen. Mothma shoots him an exasperated look, but it's false. She knows what he's doing as well as everyone else does, even before Draven follows him.

"Andor."

" _Quiere rescindir su orden?_ " Cassian asks. He doesn't know if Mothma speaks Spanish, but he's pretty sure Baze doesn't. It's the safest thing he has. Bodhi, of course, speaks all the tongues of men, but he keeps his volume too low for him to hear.

"No," Draven says with horrible finality, and Cassian thinks, _Damn you._

He thinks, briefly, about throwing the first punch right now, about taking the only chance he probably has left to avoid killing Galen Erso by killing Draven first and breaking the maker's geas. But he's tired from the fight in the woods, his ribs still hurting where someone landed a lucky blow, and hungry enough he can't drink anything but blood, and Cassian doesn't start fights he can't win. He sets the cups down in the sink and says, "Yes, sir," and then he turns and brushes past Draven, muttering something pointless about how they came in his car that doesn't excuse the rudeness at all. He's done trying.

Later, back at Jyn's place, he hugs Bodhi tight and lectures him on not ever scaring them like that again, right alongside Jyn, and he watches her dress Bodhi's scraped-shining wrists with some type of salve, then wrap them in gauze less because the wounds are worthy of it than to hide the light. He listens to them as they dare to talk about Galen Erso for what Cassian thinks might well be the first time, as Bodhi tells Jyn, "He talked about you all the time. How he hoped you were okay. How proud he was of you."

"He doesn't know me to be proud of me," Jyn protests.

"He's proud of you just for being you," Bodhi says, and Cassian makes himself listen. Wonders if the father he barely remembers would be proud of anything about him.

He doubts it.


End file.
